Message from Patricia Killiard, Head of Electronic Services and Systems, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge CB3 9DR:
We are delighted to announce that Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), published by Thomson Gale, is now available to members of the University and library users through a subscription purchased by the University Library. For those reading this outside the University, for whom the special ECCO URL used elsewhere in this post will not work, this is the ECCO home page - but with no access to the actual database off campus (but this will change).
ECCO is an online library of over 135,000 eighteenth century printed books, which also includes works from earlier periods which were valued and printed or reprinted during the eighteenth century. It contains more than 26 million scanned facsimile pages. Each title has a full citation record from the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) and is fully searchable - including full-text and illustrations covering many disciplines.
The ECCO screenshot [opens in a new window] gives some idea of the scope of this database.
For a quick overview of this product, refer to the ECCO Fact Sheet [pdf, 105KB]. For a more detailed introduction, read the ECCO Brochure [pdf, 1.5MB].
A special URL to access ECCO within the University of Cambridge network is http://infotrac.galegroup.com/itweb/cambecco. This can only be accessed on-campus (no password is required). Off-campus access will be set up shortly.