Many of these ballads are currently held in difficult to access libraries in both North America and the United Kingdom, often in fragile condition, and EBBA's aim is to make them accessible to users in a variety of digital formats.
As of August 2015, EBBA has archived 7,124 broadside ballads, from 20 different collections held at six different libraries worldwide.
The collections range from the very well-known and recognized by name - such as those housed at the Pepys Library of Magdalene College, Cambridge - to the relatively unknown.
All ballads, often originally rendered in difficult to read black letter, or Gothic font, and other early modern typefaces, are transcribed into Times New Roman using a diplomatic double-keyed transcription process, and those transcriptions are included in the archive.
All ballads are archived in Facsimile Transcriptions, in which the original blocks of text from the Ballad Facsimile have been replaced with blocks of text from the modern transcription, resulting in an image that preserves the visual experience of the original ballad, including woodcut impression illustrations, yet is easily readable by a modern audience.