TARO is a project of the Texas Digital Library Alliance. In late 1999 the Texas Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board granted the TDLA funds to pursue the first phase of a project that will ultimately make descriptions of the rich archival, manuscript, and museum collections in repositories across state available to the public, along with digitized images of selected holdings. The TDLA includes Rice University, Texas A & M University, Texas Tech University, the Texas State Library and Archives, the University of Houston, and the University of Texas at Austin. The recently completed Phase I of the project had the following goals:

• Install a central server and search engine at UT Austin
• Establish markup and content guidelines for finding aids
• Encode existing finding aids from all archival repositories at the six participating institutions
• Train staff at participating repositories to encode newly created finding aids in EAD
• Establish infrastructure at the participating repositories to facilitate encoding of new finding aids

Future phases of the project will incorporate digital surrogates of many types of collection materials, including images of documents and objects, sound files, and moving images, but the initial content of the database consists of the collection descriptions or "finding aids" that archives, libraries, and museums create to assist users in locating information in their collections. The current database of finding aids contains collection descriptions from the following repositories:

• Alexander Architectural Archive, University of Texas at Austin
• Austin History Center
• Benson Latin American Collection, University of Texas at Austin
• Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin
• Cushing Memorial Library, Texas A & M University
• Fine Arts Library, University of Texas at Austin
• Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
• Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library, John P. McGovern Historical Collections and Research Center
• Houston Public Library, Houston Metropolitan Research Center
• Robert E. Nail Archives at the Old Jail Art Center
• San Antonio Municipal Archives
• Southern Methodist University
• Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University
• Tarlton Law Library, University of Texas at Austin
• Texas/Dallas History and Archives Division, Dallas Public Library
• Texas General Land Office Archives and Records
• Texas State Library and Archives
• Texas State University San Marcus, The Wittliff Collections
• Texas Woman's University, the Woman's Collection
• Truman G. Blocker, Jr. History of Medicine Collections, Moody Medical Library, University of Texas Medical Branch
• University of Houston Libraries, Special Collections
• University of North Texas Archives
• University of St. Thomas Archives
• University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections
• University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Research Medical Library
• University of Texas at San Antonio
• Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library Rice University

These finding aids on the TARO site do not represent descriptions of the entire holdings of any of the repositories. For more information or to find out how to contact the staff, follow the links to each institution above.