Field Linguist’s Toolbox (Toolbox) — Introduction
“Toolbox is a data management and analysis tool for field linguists[,] especially powerful for handling large corpora and dictionaries.”
Toolbox SIL Website
The Field Linguist’s Toolbox (Toolbox) is a free and downloadable data management and analysis tool created for field linguists. Designed to be easy to learn, this tool is particularly effective in maintaining lexical information, including sorting, selecting, and displaying data. It is also adept at working with interlinearlized text. Toolbox was specifically created to handle large corpora and dictionaries. However, it can be used to manage any language data. Toolbox is free to download and use.
Currently, Toolbox functions best as a data management tool, as many of the import and export formats used by the program are outdated. Although Toolbox is intended to be a tool for dictionary creation, it is difficult to export dictionary data from Toolbox to make it accessible to users.
Toolbox is designed to be easy to learn and comes with a training package. Users can progress from a standard setup toward using more advanced features using self-paced instruction manuals. However, Toolbox has not had a significant update in 10+ years. Additionally, Toolbox is designed to be run only on Windows. Therefore, a Windows emulator is required to use the software on MacOS or Linux.
Toolbox provides users multiple packages to format dictionaries, wordlists, and other documents. The resource also contains packages that offer advice on handling dictionary elements, such as headers and footers.
Highlights
- Free to download and use
- Formatting is easy for beginners to learn
- Can accommodate various types of data
- Multiple tutorials and free support available
- Unicode compliant
- Includes a built-in morphological parser
- Multiple data windows can be worked on simultaneously
- Can handle a corpus of over a million words, and a dictionary of hundreds of thousands of words
From Robinson, S., Bird, S., and Aumann, G. 2007. “Managing Fieldwork Data with Toolbox and the Natural Language Toolkit.” Language Documentation & Conservation, 1 (1): 44–57. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1725.
- Data format is flexible, allowing accommodation for language idiosyncrasies
- It is easy to write software that modifies Toolbox’s functionality
Considerations
- For non-Windows users, the program must be run using a Windows emulator
- Set-up process is not straightforward
- Difficult to create a project from scratch due to the large amount of set-up required (Toolbox recommends that users work from templates that are provided)
- Changes made to an entry set are not always evenly updated in each individual entry due to an error in the program
- Cannot export work to common file types (such as PDF, CSV)
- No recent major software updates (the last update in 2019 consisted of bug fixes)
From Robinson, S., Bird, S., and Aumann, G. 2007. “Managing Fieldwork Data with Toolbox and the Natural Language Toolkit”. Language Documentation & Conservation, 1 (1): 44–57. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/1725.
- Initial setup is time-consuming and complicated (sorting and interlinearizing processes are particularly daunting at the beginning)
- Revision and editing of text is difficult
- Little support to maintain database-wide consistency when changes are made to data
- No function that enables the program to automatically complete simple/repetitive commands (users must manually add each entry, which can be time-consuming)
Alternatives to Toolbox
FLEx—which continues to be updated—is another language data management tool developed by SIL. It can be used with SIL’s Language Forge which allows online, multi-user, and macOS functionality.
TLex can also be used to manage a large language database, but it is not free.
Examples of Dictionaries Using Toolbox
An online Tlingit Verb Dictionary that was created using Toolbox can be found here.
Support Services
The SIL International page for Toolbox includes downloadable self-guided lessons and examples. There is also an option for users to submit questions here.
Developer
Toolbox was developed by SIL International. Originally called Shoebox, this resource was written by John Wimbish, a SIL field linguist. In 2007, Toolbox was updated by Alan Buseman and Karen Buseman.