John G. Blog #2: The Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920 - 1989

Collection Principles

The Leonard Bernstein Collection, ca. 1920 - 1989 is part of the American Memory collection from the Library of Congress. It was created to preserve and showcase the immense amount of historic artifacts, music manuscripts, and memorabilia of this prominent American composer, conductor, writer and teacher. These artifacts have been acquired from a variety of different sources including his friends, associates, and contemporaries. The contents of the Leonard Bernstein Collection are available for examination and study in the Performing Arts Reading Room at the Library of Congress. According to the website, the Library of Congress is providing access to collection for educational and research purposes.

Object Characteristics

The collection website is fairly user-friendly although not very attractive. As it is part of the Library of Congress, details of the collection are very thorough and an "overview" is provided to inform users about the contents and usage of the collection. Photographs are documented very clearly, are grouped by year and organized in a timeline format. Users can browse the collection by title, subject, and name of the the artifact. There are also different parts of the collection that house large quantities of memorabilia and artifacts. For example, there are over 15,000 pieces of correspondence to and from Bernstein in the collection in alphabetic order.

Metadata

The items of the collection were all documented with a sufficient amount of metadata to locate the call number, size, object type, digital ID, year of origin, and title. For example, each photo has a bibliographic information link above it to provide users with necessary information. Most photos and documents also have a link below it offering a "higher resolution" TIFF view for more details.

Intended Audience

The intended audience appears to be fans, researchers, and educators. This collection chronicles an important part of our country's music heritage. I was interested to see what items were in the collection and I was impressed to see so many items from such a wide variety of sources and types. Overall, I think that the thoroughness and wide variety of items in the collection present a well-rounded view of this music legend's life and accomplishments.