The University of California’s English Broadside Ballad Archive is a fantastic project, with a dedicated team making broadsides available to everyone.

The project provides high-quality ballad sheet facsimiles of the ballads as well as facsimile transcriptions (which preserve the ballad’s original ornament while transcribing its unfamiliar typeface into easily readable modern print). In addition, they supply recordings of the ballads whenever a tune is extant, extensive cataloguing of the ballads, including cataloguing of their illustrations or woodcut impressions, TEI/XML and MARC records, and both basic and advanced search functions that allow readers easily to find collections or individual ballads as well as their constituent parts or makers by a variety of means. They also offer background essays on the various ballad collections included in EBBA and on ballad culture generally as well as other helpful ballad resources.

For more information, visit the English Broadside Ballad Archive website: http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu.