Steering Committee 2025: 

• Chair: Katelin Dixon, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, Katelin.Dixon@ttu.edu
• Vice-Chair: CJ Williams, Harris County Public Library Cecilia.williams@hcpl.net
• Secretary: Georgeanna Gaines, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University, geogaine@ttu.edu
• At-Large Members:
  • At-Large Member (2024-2025, 2-year term): Susannah Broyles, The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University, s_b623@txstate.edu
  • At-large Member (2024-2025, 2-year term): Laney Chavez, Harris County Archives, Laney.Chavez@cco.hctx.net
• UT Libraries Representative: Aaron Choate, UT Libraries, achoate@austin.utexas.edu
• Immediate Past Chair: Matthew Richardson, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives, Northwestern University

Subcommittees

• Governance
  • Looks at peer systems’ governance structures, reports and discusses with Steering Committee; proposes formal board structure for TARO.
• Standards
  • The TARO Standards Sub-committee offers guidance on how national and international professional standards can inform the development of TARO, as well as how member institutions can form their finding aids in line with those standards. While generally not seeking to be prescriptive, the Sub-committee promotes consistency through resources such as the TARO Best Practices Guidelines.
• Funding & Sustainability
  • The TARO funding and sustainability subcommittee investigates potential funding sources, writes grant proposals, and provides follow-up support to existing grant projects. Since we’re not currently submitting a grant proposal, the funding and sustainability subcommittee currently has just one member right now, committee chair Amy Bowman. However, please contact Amy if you are interested in contributing to TARO grant-writing work or if you have ideas for grant proposals.
• Outreach & Education
  • Keeps membership aware of the Steering Committee’s efforts and requesting comments / questions, and once any changes take place, develop training options.
• Website & Technology
  • The Website and Technology (WebTech) Subcommittee provides the TARO Steering Committee with feedback about the functionality, display, and development needs of the TARO administrative and public interface. In addition, WebTech collects input from the TARO stakeholders regarding the TARO website via user surveys and testing. Those interested in volunteering for WebTech are encouraged to contact the WebTech Chair.
• Summerlee QA Finding Aid
  • Members from various TARO repositories review Word finding aids for adherence to TARO standards before forwarding to a vendor for EAD encoding.
  • Members review the EAD finding aids encoded by the vendor.
  • Communicate with Participating Repositories of the Summerlee grant funded New Member Initiative, as needed.