The main reason people collect is for enjoyment. You collect in a category that you like. Perhaps your collection brings back pleasant memories of your childhood - in this case, maybe that first 4-H ribbon or the first pie you baked. You remember the nostalgia involved - going to the 4-H fair, the smell of the cotton candy, the midway, the livestock arena - fun with friends and family. Your 4-H club meetings were special events on your calendar - perhaps the very first group you belonged to at this young age. 4-H camp may have been the first experience away from home. Accurately maintaining a 4-H record book, while not the most pleasant task at the time, was probably a new experience of accountability. All of these things are memories and one of the best ways to preserve and relive memories is to collect the artifacts associated with those memories.

Thousands of current and past 4-H members, 4-H club leaders and professionals are already collectors - they just may not know it! Many 4-H participants, when through with their 4-H years, packed away their ribbons and buttons and other 4-H items in a shoe box or manila envelope and it ended up in the closet, in a trunk in the attic or basement or some other place where you put this sort of thing. This is a collection of memories.

The National 4-H History Preservation Program receives a number of queries from current and past participants who indicate they have a wide variety of 4-H collections - 4-H photographs and scrapbooks, buttons, medals, ribbons, 4-H stamps and covers, sheet music, 4-H posters and dozens of other areas. All of these are forms of 4-H visibility.

A website to support 4-H collecting is at http://4-HCollecting.com .