Hyperlinking or associating documents to other documents based on the
names of people in the documents has become more desirable. Although
there is an automated system for installing such hyperlinks into judicial
opinions, the system is not generally applicable to other types of names
and documents, nor well suited to determine hyperlinks for names that
might refer to two or more similarly named persons. Accordingly, the
inventor devised systems, methods, and software that facilitate
hyperlinking names in documents, regardless of type. One exemplary system
includes a descriptor module and a linking module. The descriptor module
develops descriptive patterns for selecting co-occurent document
information that is useful in recognizing associations between names and
professional classes. The linking module tags names in an input document,
extracts co-occurent information using the descriptive patterns, and uses
a Bayesian inference network that processes a
(non-inverse-document-frequency) name-rarity score for each name along
with the name and selected co-occurent document information to determine
appropriate hyperlinks to other documents, such as entries in
professional directories.