It’s a new phase for NARIC and a new year for the REHABDATA Thesaurus. The Thesaurus is what we use to index all of the documents, projects, and other data that enter our collection. Each term was selected by a professional and/or researcher in disability, rehabilitation, or library and information science to reflect the terminology and usage of the field. We last updated the Thesaurus in 2005.

A Thesaurus is a living document. It should represent the most current and accurate usage of the language of the field. If the concepts have changed (e.g. medical model to environmental/participatory model) so should the language used to describe it (e.g. handicap to disability). To capture this, we’ve created the REHABDATA Thesaurus Wiki project. Every term and nonterm is included, each with its own full page and room for comments, questions, and more.

Take a moment to visit http://rehabdatathesaurus.pbwiki.com. You can browse by term or nonterm. Search for words to see how they’re used. And interact with these concepts, perhaps in a new way.

The Thesaurus Wiki will be open for comment for the next several months. We encourage you to explore.. You can even suggest terms. We will collect the comments and make recommendations for changes in Spring 2011.

Up next for the Thesaurus: A crosswalk between it and the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health!