Greetings all!

And Congratulations! TARO is the recipient of the Texas Historical Records Advisory Board’s Advocacy for Archives award!

The Advocacy for Archives Award recognizes outstanding achievements and lasting impacts on the archival community and the historical record in Texas. The 2022 recipient of this award is Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO). TARO advocates for archives by coordinating with Texas repositories to create standardized, searchable online finding aids and offering a centralized portal for identifying and locating participating collections. TARO staff also train Texas archives personnel on how to use the software and employ the standards required to streamline access on the TARO platform, txarchives.org. THRAB members believe TARO has helped revolutionize access to the historical record in Texas and looks forward to the growth and continued success of the project.

“The TARO steering committee is thrilled with this wonderful honor from THRAB that acknowledges the tremendous efforts of the countless volunteers across the dozens of member repositories contributing to this project,” said TARO steering committee chair Samantha Dodd of Southern Methodist University. “The award will also raise the profile of TARO and perhaps encourage even more repositories to join.”

Thank you all for your continued support and dedication to TARO. It is truly a group effort to develop and sustain this aggregation. Participation is voluntary and free, ensuring access and opportunity to make materials freely accessible and available to communities around the globe. In order to continue to maintain such a wonderful tool, we rely on the members and stakeholders. Help us continue to grow and keep TARO going by running for a position on the steering committee, or volunteering for a subcommittee:

Steering Committee Nominations Open

The call for nominations is now open. TARO is seeking nominations to fill three positions: Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, one At-Large Member, and Secretary. Nominations are accepted (by this online form) until Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 5pm CST. Detailed descriptions of each open position can be found in the TARO Governance Plan and the online nomination form linked in this email. We also welcome any questions about the open positions or the nomination and election process. Please reach out directly to the current Chair, Vice Chair, or any of the Nominating Committee members if you are interested in nominating a candidate or running yourself and would like more information.

Penny Castillo, Independent Contractor, drpencil9@gmail.com

Kristi Nedderman, Dallas Municipal Archives, kristi.nedderman@dallas.gov

Kathryn Slover, University of Texas at Arlington, Kathryn.slover@uta.edu

Wanted Volunteers for the Outreach and Education Committee (ASAP)

Looking for volunteers to join the outreach and education subcommittee, no experience or expertise needed. Members of this subcommittee will be focusing on: Updating the TARO Today website and documentation, create training resources (documentation, videos, etc.) based on TARO members’ needs, and disseminating information through the various TARO channels and outreach events. If you have a passion for TARO (don’t we all?), and an interest in education and outreach, please contact Robert Weaver (robert.g.weaver@ttu.edu) to join this outstanding subcommittee!

Wanted: Volunteers for the Website & Technology Subcommittee (ASAP)

Looking for volunteers to join the Website & Technology Subcommittee (WebTech). Do you process collections and write finding aids? Do you work with patrons and search for collections? Or perhaps you get to do a variety of tasks and have TARO bookmarked as one of your frequently used resources. Oxygen, ArchivesSpace or none of the above? Do not feel intimidated. Testing different kinds of searches, or submitting finding aids, or surveying our users, there is something to do for everyone. Whatever your expertise level, WebTech wants you! Please contact Ada Negraru: anegraru@mail.smu.edu to join our friendly subcommittee!

Monthly Analytics and Statistics

September usage statistics are now available and can be viewed/downloaded from our Wiki page.

Strategic Plan

NEH implementation grant completed? Check! What’s next? Steering invites your feedback on the future of TARO. The 2022-2025 Strategic Plan is open for comments and suggestions. Please submit all feedback by November 20^th, 2022.

Until next time!

Cheers~

Greetings all!

It is now midway through September and we are in the home stretch of our ARPA grant; there is still much to do, and so I will dive right in with the updates and call for volunteers:

Wanted–Participants for Subject Terms (ASAP)

Thanks to the work done on the NEH & ARPA grants, the new TARO website features much improved search features including the “browse by”. We are looking for repositories who are interested in subject terms remediation, i.e. moving from x subject term to y recommended term.  Our current subject remediation specialist will work to identify all the aids with x subject term and transition them to y based on the advanced keyword terms list developed during the NEH grant. This work on subject terms will become more useful shortly as developers are working to improve access to the subject terms in the search and in the faceting on the site. Upon review of your finding aids, the subject specialist will make recommendations and apply changes in bulk upon repository approval.

If you are interested in having your finding aids reviewed, and receiving recommendations on improving your subject/access terms, please contact Aaron Choate (achoate@austin.utexas.edu) as soon as you are able as the grant work will be completed by the end of the month.

Wanted Volunteers for the Outreach and Education Committee (ASAP)

Looking for volunteers to join the outreach and education subcommittee, no experience or expertise needed. Members of this subcommittee will be focusing on: Updating the TARO Today website and documentation, create training resources (documentation, videos, etc.) based on TARO members’ needs, and disseminating information through the various TARO channels and outreach events. If you have a passion for TARO (don’t we all?), and an interest in education and outreach, please contact Robert Weaver (robert.g.weaver@ttu.edu) to join this outstanding subcommittee!

TARO2.0 Development Update

The UTL team spent much of the past month addressing issues with one of the services that our site relies on.  They feel the site is now stable but will be monitoring it to ensure we can spend the time to address further issues if they arise.   As we are moving into the final weeks of the work funded by the TSLAC – ARPA grant, we will be concentrating on additional backend enhancements to improve site operations, modifications to finding aid display intended to improve our indexing and search engine placement as well as the final high priority items from the development queue.

Monthly Analytics and Statistics

August usage statistics are now available and can be viewed/downloaded from our Wiki page. Please note, due to the technical difficulties last month there are spikes in the URLs /system_down (55,239 views) and  /not_found (2982 views).

Steering Committee Nominations Open

The call for nominations is now open. TARO is seeking nominations to fill three positions: Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, one At-Large Member, and Secretary. Nominations are accepted (by this online form) until Tuesday, October 18, 2022 at 5pm CST. Detailed descriptions of each open position can be found in the TARO Governance Plan and the online nomination form linked in this email. We also welcome any questions about the open positions or the nomination and election process. Please reach out directly to the current Chair, Vice Chair, or any of the Nominating Committee members if you are interested in nominating a candidate or running yourself and would like more information.

Penny Castillo, Independent Contractor, drpencil9@gmail.com

Kristi Nedderman, Dallas Municipal Archives, kristi.nedderman@dallas.gov

Kathryn Slover, University of Texas at Arlington, Kathryn.slover@uta.edu

Whew, that is a lot! Thank you to everyone for their continued support of TARO and all the work you, and your colleagues are doing. There is plenty of room for more involvement and engagement; if you have any questions about steering or the subcommittee work, reach out anytime. Looking forward to an overwhelming response of interest *wink*.

Have a wonderful week! And happy fall!

Best!