The TDS is experimental software. We invite you to use the system and send us your comments and suggestions for new features, improvements, etc. We already have more on our to-do list than we can hope to accomplish, but your feedback can help us prioritize and/or adapt our plans. In addition to improvements on the software, more databases are gradually being added.
In order to help us improve the system, we will automatically record some information about your interactions with the system. This includes only information that you submit to the TDS server, and it will not be used for any purposes except to improve the design of the TDS.
The component databases of the TDS contain diverse kinds of information about more than a thousand languages. The creators of the component databases are linguists who have adhered to the quality standards for linguistic work, but they cannot guarantee that the information in the databases is free of errors. (In fact, we can pretty much guarantee that the information does contain errors!) Because of its experimental nature, the TDS server might conceivably introduce further errors because of bugs unknown to us. For these reasons, YOU SHOULD ALWAYS VERIFY ANY INFORMATION YOU EXTRACT FROM THIS SYSTEM if you want to use it elsewhere.
If you find information here that you wish to use in your work, please take care to cite it properly: You should credit the particular component database(s) that contain the information, and add something like "Accessed on (date) via the TDS server at http://languagelink.let.uu.nl/tds/".
Several of the databases have individual web interfaces, which you can use as an alternative to searching through the TDS server. Links to them are given in the database descriptions. Be warned that several of these interfaces are very minimal, and are intended for use only by those already familiar with their content. One of the major goals (and successes) of the TDS is precisely to make the databases more transparent.