Leonard Bernstein’s Boston Years: Team Research in a Harvard Classroom, a web site devoted to Bernstein’s roots in the Boston area, was launched in February by HCL’s Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library. Created by students, faculty, and librarians, it features more than a dozen unique interviews with Bernstein family, friends, and contemporaries.

As its name suggests, the site is largely the product of research conducted by students taking part in a Spring 2006 class taught by Music Department professors Carol Oja and Kay Kaufman Shelemay. Working in teams, students fused ethnography and archival research to explore the interlinking communities and institutions that shaped Bernstein’s formative years, and prepared an exhibit for the “Leonard Bernstein: Boston to Broadway” festival held that fall. The site also includes interviews conducted during the festival by students in a musical theater seminar led by Oja.

Virginia Danielson, the Richard F. French Librarian of the Loeb Music Library, believes the site will offer insight into a largelyunexplored facet of Bernstein’s history. “In all of the literature and journalism surrounding the life and musicianship of Leonard Bernstein, his origins in Boston have not really been explored,” she said.

“I am particularly proud of this project as a thoroughly integrated endeavor, knitting together the resources of the Music Department faculty, of students, and of the Loeb Music Library.”

Last month’s launch marks the end of more than three years of work, much of it spent tackling technical issues, securing the consent of dozens of students and interview subjects, and contextualizing the material, according to Liza Vick, music reference and research librarian at Loeb Music, who helped construct the site. For now, the site consists largely of interviews with individuals connected to Bernstein, but additional material, including photographs and archival documents, will be added in the coming months.

The site is the result of a collaborative effort among the library, the Academic Technology Group, and several Presidential Instructional Technology Fellows, Vick said.

While some of the student-conducted interviews will be available to all site visitors, the interviews conducted during the 2006 Bernstein festival and selected student findings will be accessible only on computer terminals in the Loeb Music Library. Researchers who wish to access the material off-site will need to make special arrangements with This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .