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Texas Archival Resources Online Receives NEH Grant

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The Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) consortium and the University of Texas Libraries have received a grant of $348,359 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to enhance their efforts to provide researchers worldwide with access to collection descriptions of archival primary sources in libraries, archives and museums across Texas.

This grant builds on a 2015 NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant which enabled planning in key areas including shared best practices, training documentation and outreach to current and potential members and users. Grant activities will include a redesign of the TARO web platform to improve functionality and appearance, a review of Encoded Archival Description (EAD3) encoding standards, work towards standardizing existing control access terms (geographic names and subject headings) and training to support participation for TARO members.

TARO was first supported by a research grant from the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund (TIF) Board of the State of Texas in 1999. The University of Texas Libraries (UT Libraries) served as the requesting institution, with project partners including the Texas Digital Library Alliance, Rice University, Texas A&M University, Texas State Library and Archives, Texas Tech University, University of Houston and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. With these grant funds, UT Libraries established the TARO website, outsourced encoding of several hundred finding aids and provided training to member repositories. Repositories began contributing their own hand-coded finding aids in 2002. UT Libraries continued to support TARO after that initial grant. In June 2018 TARO formalized its institutional home as a program of the UT Libraries and a permanent MOU was signed.

“Having the State Archives’ finding aids available online in TARO, a consortial environment, where there are many shared and related topics among the materials held by member repositories, provides untold opportunities for discovery of our unique resources,” said Jelain Chubb, Texas state archivist and director of the Archives and Information Services Division at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

The grant will fund work through April 2022 and will be administered through the University of Texas Libraries. Libraries’ Director of Digital Strategies Aaron Choate will serve as the grant’s principal investigator. Members of the TARO Steering Committee and its subcommittees will carry out work as outlined in the grant.

“As a founding partner in TARO, UT Libraries has been proud to support the project over the years and we are excited to have the opportunity to work with the team to enhance the future of this vital collective project,” said Aaron Choate, Director of Digital Strategies at The University of Texas Libraries.

NEH Logo.

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Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO), a program of the University of Texas Libraries, is a consortial initiative that facilitates access to archival resources from member archives, libraries, and museums across Texas to inform, enrich, and empower researchers all over the world.

 

ABOUT THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES

Created in 1965 as an independent federal agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at: www.neh.gov.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this article, do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

 

Archives, Grants, Research

Libraries Get NEH Funding from Partner Proposal

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Photo of archivesAmong the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) recent announcement of $22.8 million in grants for 232 humanities projects in the second round of its grant awards this fiscal year was included funding provided to the Libraries as one of the recipients for the Texas Archival Resources Online’s (TARO) proposal the “Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) to the 21st Century Collaborative Planning Project.”

The NEH will provide $35,204 in direct funding for a Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations grant to conduct strategic planning that will address researchers’ need for better intellectual access to TARO’s holdings. The Libraries, in partnership with the TARO Steering Committee and their respective institutions will use the funds to assist with the one-year collaborative planning, assessment and pilot testing project. The project will begin July 1, 2015.

TARO is a freely accessible platform for searching over 7,200 finding aids describing collections held by cultural heritage institutions in Texas. TARO has proven a rich resource for historians, documentarians, educators and students since its establishment in 1999, with participating institutions including the state’s larger repositories such as the Texas State Library and Archives, Texas A&M University, and Rice University, and smaller archives including the Old Jail Art Center and San Jacinto Museum of History, as well as over thirty other archives and libraries around the state.

In his announcement of the awards, NEH Chair William Adams said, “In the 50 years since NEH’s founding, the Endowment has supported excellence in the humanities by funding far-reaching research, preservation projects and public programs. The grants announced today continue that tradition, making valuable humanities collections, exhibitions, documentaries and educational resources available to communities across the country.”

According to Kelly Kerbow-Hudson, steering committee co-chair, “The award of the NEH planning grant is big news for TARO and its contributors — and it’s great news for the state’s archival researchers, as well.” She points out that the grant will provide the support necessary to plan for a significant update to the TARO online reference resource http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/index.html and create best practices to standardize existing finding aids.

The TARO Steering Committee — which includes representatives from repositories across the state — worked extensively to research for and prepare the grant proposal. Special thanks go to key contributors Amy Bowman of UT’s Briscoe Center for American History, Amanda Focke of Rice University’s Woodson Research Center, and Jennifer Hecker of UT Libraries.  A special thanks, as well, to additional Libraries staff involved in the process: Donna Coates, Minnie Rangel, Linda Abbey, Dr. Fred Heath as Project Director and Dr. Lorraine Haricombe as Project Director moving forward.