This book is focused on how people in different settings go about creating and maintaining collections. Collecting has featured in human practice for aeons but is now being reshaped by technology. We term this new era ‘The Icon Age’ because objects in computer systems are largely represented by icons on screens. We define collecting and describe some of the principal ways in which it has been considered, including: what motivates collectors; the types of objects collected; the types of collectors; the academic study of collecting; and the collecting sciences. We provide a more detailed description of what is meant by the Icon Age and how it came about through the introduction of the graphical user interfaceGraphical User Interface (GUI) in the 1980s. Inspired by ethnomethodologyEthnomethodology, our own findings are derived from investigations into a variety of different types of collections. EthnomethodologyEthnomethodology involves looking at what people in particular settings are actually doing to get things done and how they organise manage, use, and reason about their activities. Finally, we outline how the book is organised and the content of its chapters.