The advisory board includes New Jersey archivists, librarians, museum directors, historians, journalists and educators. They will select the newspaper titles to be digitized for this project.
Advisory Board
Robert Belvin, director, New Brunswick Public Library
Dr. Robert Belvin has been Director of the New Brunswick Free Public Library since 1990. He is the Secretary of the City’s Historical Association and is President of the New Brunswick Historical Society. He also serves on the City’s Community Arts Council and the Public Sculpture Board of Directors. He, his wife who is also a librarian, and three of his four sons live in New Brunswick. Rumors that he studied at Lake Placid with Melville Dewey are untrue.
Paul Clemens, professor, Department of History, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Paul G. E. Clemens received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1974 and has taught at Rutgers since that date. He is a historian of colonial America with an interest in New Jersey history.
William R. Fernekes, Ed. D., part-time lecturer, Rutgers Graduate School of Education; Supervisor of Social Studies, Hunterdon Central Regional HS (1987-2010, retired)
William R. Fernekes is a retired social studies educator who currently teaches as a part-time lecturer for the Rutgers Graduate School of Education. He served as the co-director of the Electronic NJ Project from 1997-2011, a digital curriculum archive with 23 curriculum units on NJ history and culture that is based at the Rutgers University Libraries as part of the NJ Digital Highway portal. He also has worked closely with the Rutgers Special Collections and University Archives on a variety of projects, including serving as guest curator for the exhibit on US Senator Clifford P. Case II of NJ which is permanently mounted in the Case Room at the Alexander Library.
Juan D. González, professor, Journalism and Media Studies Department, Rutgers University–New Brunswick.
Larry Greene, professor, Department of History, Seton Hall University
Larry Greene, Ph.D, is a Professor of History at Seton Hall University. Dr. Greene specializes in the study of the Civil War, African American History, Great Depression and World War II, and the History of the South. His present research interests involve the future publication of books on Harlem and the relationship between African Americans and Germany. He is also Co-chair of the Drew University Center for Holocaust and Genocide Study Board of Associates, a Fulbright Fellow, former member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of African American History, and former Chair of the New Jersey Historical Commission Advisory Board.
Paul Israel, editor, Thomas Edison Papers Project
Charlie Kratovil, editor, New Brunswick Today
Charlie Kratovil is the founder and editor of New Brunswick Today, an award-winning independent community newspaper serving Middlesex County. He is also a community organizer who has worked at organizations including Food & Water Watch, where he helped to defeat the privatization of Trenton’s public water system, and The Citizens Campaign, where he helped to launch Paterson Press, a successful media outlet in New Jersey’s third largest city.
Alex Leslie, graduate student, Department of English, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Maxine Lurie, professor emeritus, Department of History, Seton Hall University
Maxine N. Lurie retired from the History Department at Seton Hall University in 2010, but continues to teach one course a year, as well as do research and publish articles and books on New Jersey History. Her latest book, with Richard Veit, is Envisioning New Jersey: An Illustrated History of the Garden State.
Meredith McGill, professor, Department of English, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Angelica Santomauro, director, American Labor Museum
Jorge Schement, distinguished professor, School of Communications and Information, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Jorge Reina Schement serves as Vice Chancellor, Rutgers University New Brunswick. He is Distinguished Professor of Communication Policy, and author of over 250 books, papers, and articles. A Latino from South Texas, his research focuses on the social and policy implications of the production and consumption of information, especially as they relate to ethnic minorities. He conducted the first study of the impact of minority ownership in broadcasting, and conducted the original research that led to recognition of the Digital Divide. His studies of minority ownership contributed to the Supreme Court’s decision in Metro Broadcasting, Inc. v. F.C.C. et al. He authored the telecommunications policy agenda for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is a founding member of the FCC Federal Advisory Committee on Diversity in the Digital Age, and a member of the FCC Transition Team for the Obama administration.
Calvin Schwartz, journalist, NJDiscover.com
Calvin graduated from Rutgers University with BS degrees in Pharmacy and Science, spent 12 years in retail Pharmacy and over 25 years in optical sales and management with Luxottica Group. Then reinvention. Ten years ago, his first novel ‘Vichy Water’ was published and he subsequently morphed into a journalist, producer, co-host of NJ Discover LIVE TV Show and writer for NJ Discover where he covers music, environment, homelessness, hunger, autism and anything else relevant to Jersey’s ‘molecular’ magic. A second novel is in the ‘reinvention’ works.
Andy Urban, professor, Department of History, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Andy Urban is an assistant professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. His forthcoming book, Brokering Servitude: Migration and the Politics of Domestic Labor during the Long Nineteenth Century (NYU Press, 2018), examines the cultural and political debates that surrounded the commodification of domestic labor in the United States, and how migration policies developed in concert with attempts to regulate markets for the hire of household servants. Andy is currently working on a series of projects related to the history of Seabrook Farms, a frozen-foods agribusiness in southern New Jersey that recruited incarcerated Japanese Americans, guestworkers from the British West Indies, and European refugees during World War II and its aftermath. In 2015, Andy worked with Rutgers undergraduates and staff from the Rutgers libraries and New Jersey Digital Highway to curate the exhibition: “Invisible Restraints: Life and Labor at Seabrook Farms.”
Conveners
Ronald Becker, director emeritus, Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University–New Brunswick
Joseph Klett, director, New Jersey State Archives
Mary Chute, New Jersey State Librarian
Former Advisory Board Members
Rebecca Altermatt, head, University Archives and Special Collections, Rowan University
Mary Pat Colicchio, Summit High School Social Studies Department
Mark Di Ionno, columnist and Pulitzer finalist, Star-Ledger
Tom Donovan, chairman, New Jersey Press Association