1. A computer-based system comprising software code executable by at least one processor, an authority database set of records, and memory, the system comprising: a parser code set when executed adapted to identify one or more lexical elements determined to be indicators of entity data contained within a document; an extraction code set when executed adapted to extract an entity reference record from the document based at least in part on the lexical elements; a comparison code set when executed adapted to compare the extracted reference record against the authority database set of records; a first match code set when executed adapted to determine whether the extracted entity reference record matches any entity record in the authority database set of records; a harvest code set when executed adapted to harvest a set of harvested entity records from at least one source other than the authority database set of records; a second match code set when executed adapted to determine whether the entity reference record matches any records contained in the set of harvested entity records; and a merge code set when executed adapted to merge the entity reference record with at least a portion of data from at least one record from the set of harvested entity records determined in executing the second match code set and to add the merged entity reference record to the authority set of records.