"ECCO is an amazingly rich resource: it puts a magnificent library of eighteenth-century printed material on the desktops of scholars and students. It vastly improves access; it allows the scholar to discover new seams of material; it gives students unprecedented access to masses of primary source material. And of course it supports new kinds of searching. It is very well presented and in general easy to use." 
Joanna Innes, Somerville College, Oxford University

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Case study: Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) brings learning to life and new dimension to history at Leeds University

Eighteenth Century Collections Online was the most ambitious single scholarly digitization project ever undertaken and has resulted in a online library of over 136,000 titles and editions (over 155,000 volumes), published between 1701 and 1800, and printed in English-speaking countries, or countries under British colonial rule. The majority of works in ECCO are in the English language but there are also works printed in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish and Welsh.Full-Text Searching of more than 26 million pages takes the user directly to Primary Source materialin facsimile copy of its original. ECCO is supported by catalogue records from the English Short-Title Catalogue. 


ECCO Part 2: New Editions

The scope to create Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part 2: New Editions  arose out of several circumstances. Since ECCO’s original release, the ESTC has uncovered a wealth of valuable new material and new holdings of previously unavailable titles. Secondly, rapid developments in scanning technology have enabled Gale to digitise works too fragile to be handled at the time of ECCO’s original production. Consisting of material filmed from 2003 onwards, ECCO Part 2: New Editions is available exclusively to institutions that have purchased ECCO Part I. ECCO Parts I and II combined now contain over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes), adding greatly to the depth of 18th century research.

The titles in ECCO Part II cover the same subjects areas as the original collection, with an emphaisis on Literature, Social Science and Religion titles. This second edition includes nearly 50,000 titles and 7 million pages from the library holdings of the British Library, Bodleian, Cambridge, National Library of Scotland and the Ransom Center at the University of Texas.

Users of ECCO Parts I and II  can search the collection via a new user interface with increased functionality including MARC record/metadata enhancements, a research guide section for undergraduates with contextual essays and chronology, an image gallery and a key documents section.

Institutions with access to ECCO and Early English Books Online (EEBO) from ProQuest are able to cross-search both collections. Users can extend their searches across centuries’ of publications from the first book published in English through to the folios of Shakespeare and the classics of Defoe. 

ECCO/EEBO cross searchability is also available to ECCO I customers. For ECCO I customers who would like to migrate to the new user interface now email emea.globaltech@cengage.com.