Improving Access and Discovery of LGBTQIA+ Materials Across Collection Services Workflows

Archival descriptive practices have traditionally obfuscated the existence of or excluded entirely the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people. The development of reparative archival description practices compels archivists to reassess how best to elevate the voices of queer creators and subjects within their collections. In addition, the development of LGBTQIA+ community-generated resources allow archivists to more easily understand and implement the perspectives of queer communities to make archival resources more accessible to and discoverable by those communities. This article will discuss how a special collections library is improving the accessibility of their holdings relating to LGBTQIA+ histories by: 1) auditing archival description to identify outdated description and archival silences; 2) reviewing and revising language which obscured LGBTQIA+ relationships; and 3) developing description at the point of accession that highlights queer histories, relationships, and individuals in order to make LGBTQIA materials more accessible to their communities

Best Practices for Queer Metadata

This document is the result of two years of work by a group of nearly one hundred knowledge organisers, cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the metadata treatment of queer people, communities, and items in GLAMS (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Special Collections) and other informational institutions. Their work has been supported by over 800 peer reviewers; combined, these groups make up the Queer Metadata Collective (QMDC). The QMDC builds upon earlier work done by the Trans Metadata Collective (TMDC), a similarly-organised group of metadata workers and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the metadata representation of trans and gender-diverse people. The work of the TMDC culminated in Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources, focusing on the description, cataloguing, and classification of information resources as well as the creation of metadata about trans and gender-diverse people, including authors, communities, and other creators. Following the publication of the Best Practices, several TMDC members founded and developed the QMDC over the summer of 2022. This document focuses on metadata by and about queer people, communities, and resources. While there is significant overlap between queer metadata and trans and gender diverse metadata, QMDC’s recommendations should not be seen as excluding or superseding TMDC’s, as trans and gender diverse people, communities, and resources have specific needs. For best practices and recommendations about trans and gender-diverse resources, please consult the TMDC document. If the TMDC and QMDC recommendations conflict (we are not aware of any instances in which they do), prefer the TMDC document for trans and gender diverse resources and the QMDC for other types of queer resources.UT Librarie

Enhancer hijacking activates GFI1 family oncogenes in medulloblastoma

Medulloblastoma is a highly malignant paediatric brain tumour currently treated with a combination of surgery, radiation and chemotherapy, posing a considerable burden of toxicity to the developing child. Genomics has illuminated the extensive intertumoral heterogeneity of medulloblastoma, identifying four distinct molecular subgroups. Group 3 and group 4 subgroup medulloblastomas account for most paediatric cases; yet, oncogenic drivers for these subtypes remain largely unidentified. Here we describe a series of prevalent, highly disparate genomic structural variants, restricted to groups 3 and 4, resulting in specific and mutually exclusive activation of the growth factor independent 1 family proto-oncogenes, GFI1 and GFI1B. Somatic structural variants juxtapose GFI1 or GFI1B coding sequences proximal to active enhancer elements, including super-enhancers, instigating oncogenic activity. Our results, supported by evidence from mouse models, identify GFI1 and GFI1B as prominent medulloblastoma oncogenes and implicate 'enhancer hijacking' as an efficient mechanism driving oncogene activation in a childhood cancer