collecting can take many forms but mostly it is a question of listening and being perspicatious (ooooer)

I was at a folk festival and Joe Latter got up and did one of his 200 memorised shanties and then prefaced the next song with a preamble about being taght it by a little old lady. The song screamed at me "collect" so I did. I now have a video of him singing, I went to the Bodleain and found nothing (books or music dept) asked three Military folklorists/historians and none knew of it, though Roy Palmer did come-up with a derivative snippet.

I also gave him a recording of Robert Graves from telly - singing a distinctly different version of the Old Barbed Wire.

There are other things, some of which may have been documented but not quite as I heard it. Again I just leapt onto a suggestion of "collectable" and in those cases it was worth it. Sometimes it leads nowhere but there are still things to be found apart from what we "the Folk" do in this day and age. Who knows what the future will find interesting?