Boss Ops: Operations at the Bruce Springsteen Archives

Professor Rajinder Bhandal moderates a discussion between Prof. Melissa Ziobro and Elliot Bendoly, on the operational dynamics at the Bruce Springsteen Archives. The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music preserves the legacy of Bruce Springsteen and celebrates the history of American music and its diversity of artists and genres. Our mission is two-fold. The Springsteen Archives serves as the official repository for materials related to Springsteen and the E Street Band, including photographs, historic memorabilia, oral histories, and more. The Center for American Music explores American music more broadly. We accomplish this by producing exhibitions, concerts, and educational programming that explores and honors the cultural impact of American music past, present and future. For further information, please visit www.springsteenarchives.org. Melissa Ziobro began her career as a historian, archivist, and curator for the US Army at Fort Monmouth in 2004 prior to returning to her alma mater, Monmouth University, to teach full-time when the base closed. She has taught over a dozen different courses, including Intro to Public History; Oral History; Museums and Archives Management Basics; and Historic Site Preservation, Interpretation, and Management. In August of 2023, she became curator of the University's Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music, after having worked with the Center for many years in her faculty role (to include curating the Center’s first traveling exhibit, Springsteen: His Hometown, with the Monmouth County Historical Association in 2019). Her most recent publications include Fort Monmouth: The US Army’s House of Magic (2024) and The Battlin' Bastards of Bravo: Bravo Company, 1/506th, 101st Airborne, in Vietnam and Beyond (2025).