board examinations. Many of these panels resulted in disagreements about what social workers actually mean when they use their unique terminology. The researchers who conducted these panels wondered why the social work profession could not resolve disputes simply by consulting the dictionaries of their profession's nomenclature. However, up to that point, the social work profession did not have such a dictionary and had never developed one of its own. With most of the states in the process of developing professional licensing boards for social workers for the first time, the need for a uniform professional nomenclature and glossary became urgent. With the help of the National Association of Social Workers, the major association of the profession, Barker called on hundreds of experts in the field and in related disciplines, to assist his efforts to create a dictionary. Barker developed the list of the terms to be included in the Dictionary by reviewing the indexes of all the textbooks and journals used in the profession, and in related professions such as psychology, psychiatry, economics, administration, medicine, and other fields. He then wrote succinct definitions for several thousand terms from this list. A selection of these definitions was submitted to experts for corrections and clarifications. Eventually every term and definition had been reviewed by at least three experts before a final definition was established. Before publication, each of these definitions was reviewed for clarity and comprehensibility by graduate students in several of the schools of social work in the Washington, D.C. area. The result was the original social work dictionary, first published by NASW in 1987 with about 4,000 terms defined. With each revision, in 1991, 1995, 1999, and 2003 about 2000 additional definitions were added; the current edition has nearly 10,000 definitions in 493 pages. The dictionary also contains thousands of acronyms commonly used in the profession, and a timeline of the historical events in the development of the profession. The dictionary is now the definitive reference resource in the profession, used in agencies, universities, and social work organizations throughout the world. It has been called “a landmark in the continuing professionalization of social work—the development of a distinctive and unique vocabulary and the development of consensus by social work consultants (scholars and practitioners) on key terms.” Homeless advocacy Perhaps because of his own humble origins, Barker has always had a strong interest in the problems of homelessness. His close friendship