[Purpose] The purpose of this project is to collectively develop a data thesaurus for the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. This project is the work of many volunteers. Contributions to the project by submitting and reviewing the concepts will result in a comprehensive thesaurus. Therefore, please submit any concepts that you are concerned about.

[Goal] The goal of the thesaurus is to provide the definition of the concepts, semantic relationships among concepts, and guides of using the data. Users can learn how certain concepts such as enrollment, academic groups, credits, etc. can be defined in this campus. It will also link terms that are similarly used and direct you to explore or navigate broader, narrower, or related concepts. For the practical functionality, the thesaurus will include a description of which tables or fields in the Data Warehouse can be used for concepts. The thesaurus will contribute to UWM reporting practices by providing more consistent definitions and methods to compile the reports.

[Project Status] Currently the project is at stage 1 and 2. The project requires more volunteers/contributors to submit various entries. There are two websites for this project.

1. * Data Entry Submission Website: Please submit data entry with a definition. Your submission will be reviewed by the DID (Data Integrity and Definitions) group. The DID group consists of UWM staff members from the UITS Data Warehouse Team, Student Information System Functional Analysts and core participants from the WERIT (Warehouse End-User Reporting Initiative Team).  This team meets bi-weekly to discuss data warehouse table and field logic and definitions.
2. ** List of Entry Submitted to the Thesaurus: You can find the list of entries that have been submitted. You are welcome to review the entries and definitions and encouraged to contribute a different definition appropriate. The review process takes place in the DID meeting. If you are interested in attending the DID meeting regarding the Thesaurus, please contact Jihee Beak (jbeak@uwm.edu).