Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) is a fully text-searchable corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. ECCO is a digitization of the eighteenth-century section of the works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue (ESTC). The ESTC project records all works published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States. It also catalogues material printed elsewhere which contains significant text in English, Welsh, Irish or Gaelic, as well as any book falsely claiming to have been printed in Britain or its territories.
The vast majority of the collected works are written in English with several thousand in French or Latin, smaller numbers in Ancient Greek, German, Italian, Scots Gaelic, Spanish and Welsh, and a few in other languages. Most were printed in England, Scotland, Ireland and the United States but there are also printings from Australia, Antigua, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Bermuda, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominica, Estonia, France, Germany, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Hungary, India, Iraq, Isle of Man, Italy, Jamaica, Malta, Martinique, Mexico, Northern Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, St Kitts, St Vincent, Surinam, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad and Tobago, and Wales.
The works themselves vary from multi-volume encyclopedias, to dictionaries, law books, histories, poetry, novels, and plays, biographies, works of science, philosophy, theology, religious books, tracts and sermons, royal, government or local proclamations, letters, journals and diaries, almanacks, acts of parliament, works on art, architecture, and auction catalogues, music, petitions, and schoolbooks.