Romana Javitz (January 28, 1903[1]–January 1980) was an American artist, librarian, and Superintendent of the Picture Collection at the New York Public Library.
She studied painting at the Art Student's League and began working at the New York Public Library (NYPL) in the Children's Room in 1919.
The project was founded in the idea that modern designers, like Reeves, were unable to find visual resources from American material culture at libraries and other institutions.
Javitz and Reeves hired unemployed artists and illustrators around the county to record the decorative arts of rural and urban regions of the U.S.
Javitz saw the importance of the project and visited with Stryker in Washington, D.C. to work with him on all the new photographs and organize them into a cohesive collection.