1. I learned a few as a kid as everyone I know did, Blow the Man Down and Drunken Sailor and a handful of others. I enjoyed and learned a wide variety of traditional music through the 60s & 70s. But I was lucky enough to move to Connecticut shortly after the Sea Music Festival was started, and to be there and hear, and that is really where I became hooked on shanties specifically, singing along there.

2. Most of them, from hearing them at SMF and related events, then pestering the singers for words, buying their recordings, taping, or looking them up. But the actual learning of the songs was from joining in. I have accumulated a decent library of the books as well as LPs/tapes/CDs. I am also quite shameless about begging folks for their versions, and am quick at shorthand and transcription.

3. I pass the words along to folks a lot because I am lucky enough to retain them easily. My voice is not strong enough to sing for a big crowd. But I have taught a number of them to groups of kids, Boy and Girl Scouts particularly. If you listen ahead mentally so you don't sing yourself into a corner, a number of them are good from preschool on. We sang a lot in the car, with my kids, and also skiing, of all things, when a regular rhythm is both helpful and fun; my daughter for example belted out 'Windy Old Weather' as she swooped down Vermont mountains.

4. By far the most from listening in person, both to folks on stage or in coffee house or pub, and to folks around me after hours. Recordings in the car are second. When I find them in books, even with the music there (and sightreading is no problem), I still have a hard time considering myself to 'know' a song if I have not heard someone sing it.

5. I agree with Marc that the old people are best, old books second best, old recordings third, for learning, formally or informally, and I adore the backroad information one inevitably stumbles across. But the Net can be a huge help for those things for which I may search for years before I find the book, or may not have access to because it is in the Seaport archives. (And of course the Net has plenty of back roads too.) The potential harm is that, as in every area of knowledge, misinformation can be spread astoundingly far and fast so anyone who does not evaluate what one reads may be misled. But even the great advantage of being able to find something obscure is eclipsed by the advantage of being able to run across someone interested in the same thing, though they might be in Australia or Scotland and I would be unlikely to meet them otherwise, or they may be ten miles away but I would not know we shared the interest.