16. A non-transitory storage medium storing instructions executable by a digital processor to perform reference identification and resolution to identify reference text fragments in a document and associate referenced object text fragments in the document with the identified reference text fragments using a method comprising: identifying a set of candidate object text fragments from the document wherein each candidate object text fragment includes at least a reference number, the set of candidate text object fragments including both object text fragments and reference text fragments, the identifying not differentiating between object text fragments and reference text fragments; abstracting reference profiles from the set of candidate object text fragments, each reference profile specifying at least a reference number and an object type identifier; pairing a reference profile with an object text fragment of the set of candidate object text fragments containing that contains the reference number of the reference profile; repeating the pairing to associate reference profiles with object text fragments wherein the pairing and repeated pairing are performed substantially simultaneously based on (i) likelihood measures of candidate pairings of reference profiles and text fragments of the document and (ii) constraints including at least a constraint that each reference profile and each object text fragment belong to only one pairing; associating a reference text fragment of the set of candidate object text fragments satisfying one of the reference profiles with the object text fragment paired with the satisfied reference profile; and repeating the associating to associate reference text fragments of the document with object text fragments.
18. The storage medium as set forth in claim 16 , wherein the pairing and repeated pairing are performed using integer linear programming to optimize the likelihood measures of candidate pairings of reference profiles and text fragments of the document subject to the constraints including at least the constraint that each reference profile and each object text fragment belong to only one pairing.