The Linguist's Shoebox

Shoebox has characteristics of three common kinds of computer software:

• Database management systems (e.g., organizing information using records and fields)
• Word processors (e.g., text editing and formatted printing)
• Web browsers (e.g., organizing information in "chunks" that are connected by links)

Because Shoebox is designed especially for field researchers, it has some unique characteristics:

• management of multilingual data (especially minority languages)
• flexible options for exploratory data analysis
• integration of interlinearizing text with building a dictionary

Here are some relationships between Shoebox, a word processor, and a web browser:

	Shoebox	Microsoft Word	Web browser
Basic file	database	document	web page
Control file	database type	document template	style sheet
File format	Standard Format	RTF	HTML or XML
Unit of markup	marker	style	tag
Basic unit of data	data field	paragraph	element
Data connection	data link	cross-reference	hypertext link