Eighteenth Century Collections Online Explained

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a digital collection of books published in Great Britain during the 18th century.^{[1] [2]}

Gale, an education publishing company in the United States, assembled the collection by digitally scanning microfilm reproductions of 136,291 titles.^{[1] [3]} Documents scanned after 2002 are added to a second collection, ECCO II. As of January 2014, ECCO II comprises 46,607 titles.^[4]

Conversions and access

So far 2,231 texts have been released free to the public^[5] through the work of the University of Michigan’s Text Creation Partnership. Rather than OCR, they rekey the texts^[6] and tag them with TEI.^[7] Their aim is to enable improved access to a fraction of the collection: they are making SGML/XML text editions for 10,000 books.^[8] In addition to the free version, subscription access is also offered.^[7]

Text analytic tools are available on this subset through the Text Analysis Portal for Research project.^[9]

One of the "Text Creation Partners", the University of Oxford, has converted the public domain texts into free, publicly accessible versions, in accordance with the Text Encoding Initiative P5 guidelines, and makes them available in a variety of file formats, including HTML and EPUB via the Oxford Text Archive.^[10]

Cross-search is also available from ProQuest for those who subscribe to both Early English Books Online and ECCO.^[11]

See also

• American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Book scanning
• British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
• Burney Collection
• English Short-Title Catalogue
• Books in the United Kingdom

References

• Levack, Kinley. Digital ECCOs of the eighteenth century. EContent. November 1, 2003.
• Poyntz, Nick. The future of the past: digital technology is rapidly changing the nature and scope of historical enquiry for both academics and enthusiasts. introduces a new series that examines these revolutionary developments. History Today. April 1, 2010.
• Martin, Shawn. Introduction. Doing Translation History in EEBO and ECCO Early Modern Literary Studies. 14.2/Special Issue 17 September 1, 2008—papers from a conference called Bringing Text Alive: The Future of Scholarship, Pedagogy, and Electronic Publication about how databases including ECCO have impacted scholarship

External links

• • Digital version with EPUBs at Oxford —
• Eighteenth Century Collections Online Text Creation Partnership (ECCO–TCP), University of Michigan Library, searchable SGML/XML-encoded texts

Notes and References

1. Web site: ECCO Navigation Guide . 11 January 2014.
2. Web site: JISC: The world's largest digital library of 18th century printed books grows even larger for UK academic community . 11 January 2014.
3. Smith . Jennette . 18 August 2003 . Gale, ProQuest hope to find new money in old documents: Gale Group launches new Eighteenth Century Collections Online . . 'The microfilm images are digitized using software developed by HTC Global Services in Troy. The cost per image has declined from 16–19 cents to below double digits' said CEO Allen Paschal..
4. Web site: ECCO Part II: New Editions . Gale / Cengage Learning . Cengage Learning . 11 January 2014 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20140111134911/http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/eighteenth-century-collections-online.aspx . 11 January 2014 .
5. Web site: TCP and Gale Cengage release 2,200 ECCO Texts to the public . 18thconnect.org . 2011-04-25 . 2013-01-19.
6. Web site: Text Creation Partnership - Transcribed by hand. Owned by libraries. Made for everyone . Lib.umich.edu . 2013-01-19 . 2012-05-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120503122309/http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/ecco/description.html . dead .
7. Web site: Text Creation Partnership - Transcribed by hand. Owned by libraries. Made for everyone . Lib.umich.edu . 2013-01-19 . 2012-05-03 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120503122240/http://www.lib.umich.edu/tcp/about/about.html . dead .
8. Web site: Eighteenth Century Collections Online . Quod.lib.umich.edu . 2013-01-19.
9. Web site: TAPoR News Channel: General . Portal.tapor.ca . 2011-04-29 . 2013-01-19 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120517132526/http://portal.tapor.ca/news-feeds/2.rss/440 . 2012-05-17 .
10. Web site: Oxford conversion of ECCO . Tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk . 2013-01-19 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120430012717/http://tei.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ecco/ . 2012-04-30 .
11. ProQuest offers ProQuest announced an agreement with Gale, part of Cengage Learning, to connect its respective digital research databases of early modern English books via cross-search technology. Online January 1, 2008.