2022-2025 Strategic Plan

TARO Today | TARO Tomorrow

Vision:

TARO fosters a culture of collaboration among Texas archives, libraries, and museums allowing participants to overcome challenges together. TARO is a community responsive to changes in technology, demographics, and resources, and enhances the field of archival practice by anticipating the needs and behavior of 21st-Century researchers.

Mission:

TARO brings together historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more from archives, libraries, and museums across Texas to inform, enrich, and empower researchers all over the world to discover information for educational and professional purposes, as well as for personal enjoyment. 

Strategic Themes:

Resilient

TARO must be capable of weathering the unfathomable; must withstand or recover quickly from difficult and ever changing conditions.

Responsive

TARO must react quickly and positively to both input and feedback from patrons and participating repositories. TARO must respond to changes within the archival profession ranging from technological advances to professional standards and the expectations of its patrons and repositories. 

Revolutionary

TARO must look toward the future, take risks, and put forth an effort to be “ahead of the game.” 

Strategic Goals/Initiatives:

1. Strengthen TARO repositories by providing a variety of educational resources 

  • Train and prepare regional instructors who can offer workshops and presentations on behalf of TARO beyond the traditional 1-day model to create sustainability. (FS)(OE)
  • Develop sample workflows for various types of contributing institutions/staffs (OE) (ST)
  • Develop tutorials, video training, and how-to resources; update existing resources as needed (OE) (S) (AT) 
  • Streamline TARO Today; enhance it to make it a one stop resource center for all TARO documentation (Subject terms, BPG, announcements, training materials (videos), Summerlee, how to join) (ST)

2. Increase TARO use/traffic through ongoing outreach and community collaboration

  • Explore SNAC membership; possible collaborative work (AT) 
  • Participation at archival outreach events (i.e. bazaars, genealogy workshops and other academic conferences) to promote TARO as a resource
    • Create an active list of events, as well as handouts, elevator pitches, talking points for repositories to use (OE) (ST)
  • Provide monthly updates to TARO today/listserv (ST)

3. Diversity and Inclusion

  • Conduct demographic study of TARO: types of repositories represented (public, private, government, nonprofit, museums, historical society), geographical regions, organizations, subjects, community representation (ST)(MAL)
  • Investigate/create proof of concept for creating and uploading multilingual finding aids (ST)(S)
    • TARO can display and search in other languages 
    • Contact other archival consortia to see if/how they have implemented this
  • Duplicate TARO Today Content in other languages; student project for university (i.e. Spanish)
    • also highlight non-English-language finding aids somehow (txarchives; taro today; elsewhere?) (ST)
  • Create list of repos to work with and bring into TARO (Focusing on LGTBQ+, Hispanic serving institutions, and HBCU) (ST)(Sum)

4. Standards and Statistics 

  • Authorized Terms committee work subject heading project (AT)
  • Develop TARO statistics, empower repositories to use stats to demonstrate TARO value (ST)(WT)(OE)
  • Post-grant activity to highlight the use of and evaluation of the OAI-PMH and REST APIs for collecting finding aid data. (WT)
  • Incorporate ongoing user testing to develop ongoing TARO wishlist of features for future site iteration (WT) 
  • Workflows/input on Archival Management Systems such as: ASpace, Cuadra Star, ATOM exports (WT)
  • Maintain a Best Practice Guide for TARO2 (ST)

5. Development & Sustainability

  • Funding: potential needs/projects accompanied by a list of “who funds things”, i.e. NHPRC Access grant (Diversity/representation) (FS)
  • Develop list of potential repos; recruitment based on need, region, representation (ST)
  • Continue NAFAN partnership (ST)
    • What resources can we marshal to help them?
    • How will TARO fit in? What is required to contribute?
    • Knowledge transfer as Steering members change (Weaver)
  • Include and encourage more stakeholder voices; diversify representation on TARO Steering committee (ST) (G) (FS) (WT) (OE) (S) (AT) (Sum) (MAL)
  • Develop Summerlee members offboarding procedures, transition materials (Sum)(ST)(OE)

TARO Subcommittees:

  • Governance (G)
  • Funding & Sustainability (FS)
  • WebTech (WT)
  • Outreach & Education (OE)
  • Standards (S)
  • Authorized Terms (AT)
  • Summerlee Q&A (Sum)

Steering Committee (ST); Members at Large (MAL)