 Since the early 1970s, the Five Folklore Archives and USU Special Collections has housed the collecting assignments of USU students and folklore courses. Student fieldwork collections are one of the most important components of the Folklore Archives. Let's look at the collecting guide for students link. The purpose of having students collect folklore for a class assignment is to provide them with first-hand experience with how folklore is identified, collected, and archived. The Five Folklore Archives accepts two main types of collecting projects, single-item and focused. Single-item projects give students the freedom to collect varied genres of folklore from different folk groups. We have several examples of single-item collections such as customs. Here's an example of a single folk custom from New Year's Eve, with information about the informant and more context on the piece of folklore. Focus projects are united around a theme, a particular genre, folk group, mode of transmission, or subject. To view examples of focus projects, select Focus Project, Example. This example highlights traditional recipes of Cache Valley and includes 15 single items or recipes. At the heart of each collecting type is the item of folklore. Therefore, folklorists want to make sure students accurately represent the folklore item. We do this by using a consistent format which you can view by selecting Collecting Guide under Single Item. This form ensures that the item or collection will be clear and useful to people working in the field that is dependent on reliable observations of culturally important expressions and events. Collecting items all include name of informant or point of discovery, like the internet, place the item was collected, and date of collection. The main body of the collection includes title, what the item is called, like mother goose, genre, folklore category, informant, who told you or where you found the item, like the internet, bumper sticker, or graffiti, etc. Context. The context is where, when, and with whom of the folklore. You want to consider three different types of context here, the context of collection, the context of use, and the cultural context of the folklore. Text. The item of folklore quoted verbatim or sketched, or photographed. For more information on each of these categories, check out the Collecting Guide explained.