Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-Informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice

Executive Summary The Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project convened a group of experts, practitioners, and community members to determine ways of improving descriptive practices, tools, infrastructure, and workflows in libraries and archives. The result, this community agenda, is offered to the broad library and archives community of practice. The agenda draws together insights from the convening, related research, and operational work that is ongoing in the field. All institutions hold power to make meaningful changes in this space, and all share collective responsibility. The agenda is not a “how-to guide,” but it is constructed to instruct and chart a path toward reparative and inclusive description. The agenda is divided into two distinct parts. The first part provides contextual information regarding the project, the convening, and the methods used to create this agenda. It also frames the historical, local, and workflow challenges and tensions to consider when approaching inclusive and reparative metadata work. The second part, “A Framework of Guidance,” and the Appendix, suggest actions and exercises that can help frame local priorities and areas for change and also provides examples to inspire local work. Inclusive and reparative description work is highly dependent on local context, and therefore a specific course of action must be created that is unique to each institution’s readiness and position relative to communities. We have endeavored to be respectful and accurate with the terms that we have used, but we recognize that some words carry regional and community-based differences. Readers are advised that this report does contain a handful of illustrative examples of descriptive language that can and does inflict harm or offense. The urgency to address past harms and correct harmful behaviors and workflows must be tempered by proceeding at a speed that supports building trust, promotes continuous learning, and embraces iterative effort. The work of reparative and inclusive metadata will never be finished. Stewarding the data about library and archive collections for users today and into the future will require ongoing refinement to practice. OCLC, as an organization that plays a significant role in the stewardship of library metadata, is very pleased to be able to facilitate the production of this community agenda. The agenda and its recommendations will also be an important guide for OCLC as it charts its own way forward. The work of confronting and addressing harmful descriptive practices is not easy, and we are grateful for community contributions that have informed and shaped this project and publication

The Effects of Including a Callous Unemotional Specifier for the Diagnosis of Conduct Disorder

“With Significant Callous-Unemotional Traits” has been proposed as a specifier for Conduct Disorder (CD) in the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The impact of this specifier on children diagnosed with CD should be considered

Distinguishing primary and secondary variants of callous-unemotional traits among adolescents in a clinic-referred sample.

The current study used model-based cluster analyses to determine if there are two distinct variants of adolescents (ages 11 - 18) high on callous-unemotional (CU) traits that differ on their level of anxiety and history of trauma. The sample (n = 272) consisted of clinic-referred youths who were primarily African-American (90%) and from low income families. Consistent with hypotheses, three clusters emerged, including a group low on CU traits, as well as two groups high on CU traits that differed in their level of anxiety and past trauma. Consistent with past research on incarcerated adults and adolescents, the group high on anxiety (i.e., secondary variant) was more likely to have histories of abuse and had higher levels of impulsivity, externalizing behaviors, aggression, and behavioral activation. In contrast, the group low on anxiety (i.e., primary variant) scored lower on a measure of behavioral inhibition. On measures of impulsivity and externalizing behavior, the higher scores for the secondary cluster only were found for self-report measures, not on parent-report measures. Youths in the primary cluster also were perceived as less credible reporters than youth in the secondary or cluster low on CU traits. These reporter and credibility differences suggest that adolescents within the primary variant may underreport their level of behavioral disturbance, which has important assessment implications

Duox, Flotillin-2, and Src42A Are Required to Activate or Delimit the Spread of the Transcriptional Response to Epidermal Wounds in Drosophila

The epidermis is the largest organ of the body for most animals, and the first line of defense against invading pathogens. A breach in the epidermal cell layer triggers a variety of localized responses that in favorable circumstances result in the repair of the wound. Many cellular and genetic responses must be limited to epidermal cells that are close to wounds, but how this is regulated is still poorly understood. The order and hierarchy of epidermal wound signaling factors are also still obscure. The Drosophila embryonic epidermis provides an excellent system to study genes that regulate wound healing processes. We have developed a variety of fluorescent reporters that provide a visible readout of wound-dependent transcriptional activation near epidermal wound sites. A large screen for mutants that alter the activity of these wound reporters has identified seven new genes required to activate or delimit wound-induced transcriptional responses to a narrow zone of cells surrounding wound sites. Among the genes required to delimit the spread of wound responses are Drosophila Flotillin-2 and Src42A, both of which are transcriptionally activated around wound sites. Flotillin-2 and constitutively active Src42A are also sufficient, when overexpressed at high levels, to inhibit wound-induced transcription in epidermal cells. One gene required to activate epidermal wound reporters encodes Dual oxidase, an enzyme that produces hydrogen peroxide. We also find that four biochemical treatments (a serine protease, a Src kinase inhibitor, methyl-ß-cyclodextrin, and hydrogen peroxide) are sufficient to globally activate epidermal wound response genes in Drosophila embryos. We explore the epistatic relationships among the factors that induce or delimit the spread of epidermal wound signals. Our results define new genetic functions that interact to instruct only a limited number of cells around puncture wounds to mount a transcriptional response, mediating local repair and regeneration

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Multiplatform Analysis of 12 Cancer Types Reveals Molecular Classification within and across Tissues of Origin

Recent genomic analyses of pathologically-defined tumor types identify “within-a-tissue” disease subtypes. However, the extent to which genomic signatures are shared across tissues is still unclear. We performed an integrative analysis using five genome-wide platforms and one proteomic platform on 3,527 specimens from 12 cancer types, revealing a unified classification into 11 major subtypes. Five subtypes were nearly identical to their tissue-of-origin counterparts, but several distinct cancer types were found to converge into common subtypes. Lung squamous, head & neck, and a subset of bladder cancers coalesced into one subtype typified by TP53 alterations, TP63 amplifications, and high expression of immune and proliferation pathway genes. Of note, bladder cancers split into three pan-cancer subtypes. The multi-platform classification, while correlated with tissue-of-origin, provides independent information for predicting clinical outcomes. All datasets are available for data-mining from a unified resource to support further biological discoveries and insights into novel therapeutic strategies

Reimagine Descriptive Workflows: A Community-informed Agenda for Reparative and Inclusive Descriptive Practice

OCLC, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, sponsored the Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project to better understand and address harm caused by cultural institutions' collection descriptions.The Reimagine Descriptive Workflows project convened a group of experts, practitioners, and community members to determine ways of improving descriptive practices, tools, infrastructure, and workflows in libraries and archives. The result, this community agenda, is offered to the broad library and archives community of practice. The agenda draws together insights from the convening, related research, and operational work that is ongoing in the field. All institutions hold power to make meaningful changes in this space, and all share collective responsibility.  The agenda is constructed to instruct and chart a path toward reparative and inclusive description. The agenda is divided into two distinct parts.The first part provides contextual information regarding the project, the convening, and the methods used to create this agenda. It also frames the historical, local, and workflow challenges and tensions to consider when approaching inclusive and reparative metadata work.The second part offers a framework of guidance that suggests actions and exercises that can help frame institutions' local priorities and areas for change, and also provides examples to inspire local work.OCLC, as an organization that plays a significant role in the stewardship of library metadata, is very pleased to be able to facilitate the production of this community agenda. The agenda and its recommendations will also be an important guide for OCLC as it charts its own way forward. The work of confronting and addressing harmful description practice is not easy, and we are grateful for community contributions that have informed and shaped this project and publication

Data Curation Profiles Symposium Panel on Opportunities in the Data Curation Landscape

The Data Curation Profiles Symposium was hosted by Purdue Libraries and was held on September 24 2012. The participants on the panel on opportunities in the data curation landscape were Chuck Thomas (IMLS via Skype), Rachel Frick (DLF), and Dr. Helen Tibbo (UNC-Chapel Hill). Participants on the panel were asked to answer and discuss three questions: Looking forward, where is the profession going? What opportunities are there for librarians to get involved in data curation? How have you seen or how do you see the data curation profiles toolkit helping in this area