UNOFFICIAL Memory Books!
Troop Leader Resources 8 Comments 
ambassadors, badges we don't need no stinkin badges, brownies, cadettes, daisies, gsusa, juniors, seniors, troop stuff
A few years ago, the Greater Iowa council came up with Memory Books for girls (and leaders too, I suppose). I vaguely remember what they looked like, but I thought it was a great idea, especially considering girls don’t have their own handbooks these days due to the way GSUSA has arranged national programming. GSUSA took the idea and ran with it, and soon afterward, published its own version in 2019:
From what I could tell, they were a popular item. Except there was one major drawback. GSUSA releases new badges every year, and the memory books were bound books. Leaders could download PDF files featuring the new badges and print them off, but shoving loose pages into the books doesn’t work very well and doesn’t look very good on top of it. And after a few years, you’d have to give a girl a book with tons of extra pages. Needless to say, GSUSA realized this after the fact and discontinued the memory books. You can still order Senior and Ambassador ones as of today, but at this point, two or three years of new badges have been released since they were originally published.
I’ve always said that instead of a bound book, GSUSA should have created the memory books as binders so that additional pages could easily be added (or removed as the case may be). Additionally, the other awards such as the Safety and Summit ones weren’t included in the memory books. What to do? I’ve found through the years that if you wait for GSUSA to do something, you’ll be waiting a loooooong time, so just do it yourself you want it done.
So I put together the Memory Books the way I thought they should have been published originally. They’re in a 8 ½ x 11″ printer-friendly format, so a standard 3 ring binder can be used. I even used the Palatino font to match our current branding standards. The nice thing about using a 3 ring binder is that you can add other parts to it like a pencil pouch if you want girls to bring it to meetings as a stand-in badge book. Note that the badge descriptions come straight from Badge Explorer and are only summaries of the requirements, so you’ll need to refer to either VTK or the badge booklets to get the full requirements.
Daisy: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bx66hjimcj3tbxf/Daisy%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Brownie: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8hf97sj2afk30i2/Brownie%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Junior: https://www.dropbox.com/s/i1w6iictedlxk89/Junior%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Cadette: https://www.dropbox.com/s/00w1nlxe3i3e4nt/Cadette%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Senior: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q6t3wm97hwor1cw/Senior%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Ambassador: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z76vkok4cy9nwz0/Ambassador%20Memory%20Book%20Original.pdf?dl=0
Many thanks to the multiple people who proofread these booklets. There are a lot of typos in Badge Explorer. Like a crazy lot. If you see more or other errors, please let me know so that I can fix them. As GSUSA releases new badges and programming, I’ll create separate files for them.
No money should be made off of this project. They are very much UNOFFICIAL and are NOT sanctioned by GSUSA. Enjoy!
It would be really nice to have a page for Adults to add their activities, earned recognitions, troops lead or years of service
Adult book would be awesome
Thank you. I do outreach education and work with Girl Scouts and leaders, so it very handy for me to have all of the badge information in one place. I am a Lifetime Member but do not have a troop, so I do not always have access to the VTK and need to ask every year to be added.
asa lifetime member you can ask to be added to your local Service Unit as a volunteer and that should give you the online access to VTK that you’re looking for 🙂
This is such a great response. Thank you for sharing it! Will you be updating it this year?
This is such a great resource. Thank you for sharing it! Will you be updating it for this 23-24 year?
Yes, they are hot off the press and can be found here: https://girlscoutwithacause.dawgtoons.com/2023/08/updated-unofficial-memory-books-for-2023-24/
Thank you! this is exactly what I’m looking for. My daughter loves to go to Badge Day/Con/palooza events and fill her vest with every badge she can earn and then comes home remembering 3-4 things she did and most of it was just “fun stuff” and I have no idea what they did!