Toward Ethical and Inclusive Descriptive Practices

This case study describes the context which galvanized our Collection Management unit at UCLA Library Special Collections to collectively craft a descriptive practices statement within a study group focused on an anti-oppressive approach to discovery and access. This paper discusses the planning and design of the study group, our direct engagement at meetings, collaborative iteration, and liberatory pedagogical strategies that enabled the statement’s publication, and its impact within our department, library, and beyond. This work speaks to radical descriptive change and provides a potential path for the development of ethical and inclusive descriptive practices at other institutions

Computational analysis of expression of human embryonic stem cell-associated signatures in tumors

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The cancer stem cell model has been proposed based on the linkage between human embryonic stem cells and human cancer cells. However, the evidences supporting the cancer stem cell model remain to be collected. In this study, we extensively examined the expression of human embryonic stem cell-associated signatures including core genes, transcription factors, pathways and microRNAs in various cancers using the computational biology approach.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We used the class comparison analysis and survival analysis algorithms to identify differentially expressed genes and their associated transcription factors, pathways and microRNAs among normal vs. tumor or good prognosis vs. poor prognosis phenotypes classes based on numerous human cancer gene expression data. We found that most of the human embryonic stem cell- associated signatures were frequently identified in the analysis, suggesting a strong linkage between human embryonic stem cells and cancer cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present study revealed the close linkage between the human embryonic stem cell associated gene expression profiles and cancer-associated gene expression profiles, and therefore offered an indirect support for the cancer stem cell theory. However, many interest issues remain to be addressed further.</p

Can You Dig It? Diamonds in Your Own Blackyard: Excavating and Preserving Audiovisual Gems Within the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company Records

UCLA Library Special Collections is home to the records of the Golden State Mutual (GSM) Life Insurance Company, one of the first Black-owned and operated insurance companies in the country. Among the company’s rich documentation exists a large selection of audiovisual materials that tell a story of African American entrepreneurship and Los Angeles history, and which have recently started being digitized to be made available online through generous grant funding from the National Film Preservation Foundation and the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation

Mapping Landscape Values: Issues, Challenges and Lessons Learned from Field Work on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington

In order to inform natural resource policy and land management decisions, landscape values mapping (LVM) is increasingly used to collect data about the meanings that people attach to places and the activities associated with those places. This type of mapping provides geographically referenced data on areas of high density of values or associated with different types of values. This article focuses on issues and challenges that commonly occur in LVM, drawing on lessons learned in the US Forest Service Olympic Peninsula Human Ecology Mapping Project. The discussion covers choosing a spatial scale for collecting data, creating the base map, developing data collection strategies, the use of ascribed versus assigned values, and the pros and cons of different mapping formats. Understanding the common issues and challenges in LVM will assist policy makers, land managers, and researchers in designing a LVM project that effectively balances project goals, time and budgetary constraints, and personnel resources in a way that ensures the most robust data and inclusive public participation

Herstory Belongs to Everybody or The Miracle: A Queer Mobile Memory Project

The Miracle is an artistic and activist queer project begun in 2004. This article takes the form of a transcribed interview between the founders of the Miracle and a graduate student volunteer. The authors, all participants in The Miracle, describe the queer bookmobile/mobile archives project as an intervention that seeks to protest the loss of queer community spaces in Los Angeles and Oakland, to temporarily disrupt the progress of gentrification and its attendant displacement of poor and minoritized communities, and to “redistribute” knowledge, literature, and information. The purpose of the article is to describe the activity as a memory project centered in a particular community and to continue a conversation between minoritized community groups and the archival profession in the mode of X, Campbell and Stevens’ 2009 contribution to Archivaria, “Love and Lubrication in the Archives, or rukus!: A Black Queer Archive for the United Kingdom.” In our work and in this article, we recognize that certain aspects of our practice are incommensurable with archival theory and professional archival standards of description, preservation, or access, but argue that genuine community-based work cannot take place exclusively in the remove of official institutions. Our alternative model of redistribution aims to meet people in the city, in their places of work, and all manner of public and private spaces as a project of memory preservation and political protest

Herstory Belongs to Everybody or The Miracle: A Queer Mobile Memory Project

The Miracle is an artistic and activist queer project begun in 2004. This article takes the form of a transcribed interview between the founders of the Miracle and a graduate student volunteer. The authors, all participants in The Miracle, describe the queer bookmobile/mobile archives project as an intervention that seeks to protest the loss of queer community spaces in Los Angeles and Oakland, to temporarily disrupt the progress of gentrification and its attendant displacement of poor and minoritized communities, and to “redistribute” knowledge, literature, and information. The purpose of the article is to describe the activity as a memory project centered in a particular community and to continue a conversation between minoritized community groups and the archival profession in the mode of X, Campbell and Stevens’ 2009 contribution to Archivaria, “Love and Lubrication in the Archives, or rukus!: A Black Queer Archive for the United Kingdom.” In our work and in this article, we recognize that certain aspects of our practice are incommensurable with archival theory and professional archival standards of description, preservation, or access, but argue that genuine community-based work cannot take place exclusively in the remove of official institutions. Our alternative model of redistribution aims to meet people in the city, in their places of work, and all manner of public and private spaces as a project of memory preservation and political protest