Taken in its widest sense to cover all attempts to explain a computer file to its users, the documentation of the Eighteenth-century Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) has been a complicated business. The sources for information concerning the online file are various, as indeed they have to be because the online file is carried by two (soon to be four) computer networks. In addition, the different groups of users require different forms of explanation. It is perhaps best, at the outset of this paper, that I identify some of the peculiar problems that have arisen in a project of this size so that I can then proceed to explain the steps that have been taken to overcome them.
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