How does the TARO Steering Committee work? 

• See the Governance Plan

Steering Committee 2019: 

• Chair: Carla Alvarez, UT Libraries, Benson Latin American Collection, c.alvarez@austin.utexas.edu
• Vice-Chair / Chair-elect: Rebecca Romanchuk, Texas State Library and Archives Commission, rromnchk@tsl.texas.gov
• Secretary: Irene Lule, Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin, irenelule@utexas.edu
• At large members:
  •  Samantha Dodd, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, smdodd@smu.edu (2018-2019)
  • Paul Fisher, Baylor University, Paul_Fisher@baylor.edu (2018-2019)
  • Robert Weaver, Texas Tech University, robert.g.weaver@ttu.edu (2018-2020)
• UT Libraries liaison: Aaron Choate
• UT Libraries programmers:
  • JJ Bennett jbennett@austin.utexas.edu  
  • Joanna Jackson j.jackson@austin.utexas.edu
• Immediate past chair: Sandra Yates, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center, sandra.yates@library.tmc.edu

Governance

Chair: Amanda Focke

• Investigate at peer systems’ governance structures
• Report and discuss with Steering Committee
• Propose a formal board structure for TARO

Standards

Co-chairs: Becky Romanchuk & Carla Alvarez

• Draft EAD Best Practices Guidelines (BPG) that comply with the newly released EAD3 schema and second edition of Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS)
• Consider how peer consortia have handled repositories’ use of different standards for controlled vocabulary (e.g., Library of Congress subject headings vs. Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus terms).
• Discuss the possible role of broad thematic (e.g., Education, Arts and Humanities) and geographic (e.g., West Texas) browse terms that will provide easy entry points to TARO finding aids.

Funding & Sustainability

Chair: Amy Bowman

• Explore grant funding possibilities for update / development of TARO.
• Explore whether any peer systems use a membership fee to sustain operations.

Outreach & Education

Chair: James Williamson

• Keep membership aware of of the Steering Committee’s efforts 2015-2016 and ongoing changes
• Solicit feedback from TARO members (comments / questions)
• Develop training materials

Technologies & Website

Chair: Robert Weaver

• Understand technical implications of TARO standards, users, and goals
• Advise on possible technical directions for TARO
• Manage and train other members to use/update TARO Today blog
• Plan and facilitate platform evaluations
• Produce user personas and use cases
• Create evaluation matrix for platform evaluation
• Conduct Q&A with platform reps
• Create technical documentation that can be shared with member repositories (Work with Outreach Committee)

 QA Finding Aid

Chair: Sandra Yates

• Volunteers from various TARO repositories will review Word finding aids for adherence to TARO standards before forwarding to a vendor for EAD encoding.
• Members will review the EAD finding aids encoded by the vendor.
• Communicate with Participating Repositories of the Summerlee grant funded New Member Initiative, as needed.