Wonderful and thoughtful replies coming in! I hope more of you join in.

Let me add another aspect of collecting: how the collector finds the songs. Helen Hartness Flanders was not a folkie back in 1929. She was a wife, mother, amateur pianist, published writer, and a patron of the arts. She had a job to do for this committee and she had to use her wits to figure out how to find known singers or have the singers come to her. She asked everyone she knew if they knew people who liked to sing the old songs. She sent out letters to all the schools in Vermont (asking teachers to have children go home and ask if their parents or grandparents had old songs passed down orally) and to the granges; she also sent out articles which were published in several area newspapers in which she described her quest and gave examples of songs and recounted anectdotes from the people who had shared their family songs. Later on she gave lectures about ballads and brought several of the people who had given her the songs to sing them for the audience. Some of these singers were real characters! These lectures, articles and other methods of making folks aware of their heritage WORKED TO BRING THE SONGS IN. HHF received mail about ballads, tunes and texts written out, addresses of people who were thought to know songs, etc. My grandmother also could look at someone and have a sense that they might sing--she had immense charm and could outright ask a total stranger if he remembered an old song like ".....". Recently, someone told me of being in the checkout line at a grocery store with my grandmother. The checkout person was humming a tune. Sure enough, a conversation ensued and more songs were on their way into the Collection!

So how did other collectors go about finding the songs?