STM publisher Springer has announced that the Springer Book Archives (SBA) now contain 72,000 eBooks. This news represents the latest developments in a project that seeks to digitise nearly every Springer book ever published, dating back to 1842 when the publishing company was founded. The announcement was made at the British UKSG Conference in Bournemouth.
The titles are being digitised and made available again for the scientific community through SpringerLink, Springer's online platform. By the end of 2013 an unprecedented collection of around 100,000 historic, scholarly eBooks, in both English and German, will be available through the SBA. Researchers, students and librarians will be able to access the full text of these books free of any digital rights management. Springer also offers a print-on-demand option for most of the books.
Notable authors whose works Springer has published include high-level researchers and Nobel laureates, such as Werner von Siemens, Rudolf Diesel, Emil Fischer and Marie Curie. Their publications will be a valuable addition to this historic online archive.
When complete, the SBA will contain roughly equal numbers of titles in English and German. The archives include around 50 different imprints, the majority of which are scientific publications, reflecting Springer's long publishing tradition. Some well-known specialist book imprints include the long-standing German engineering publisher Vieweg (now SpringerVieweg), the U.S. computer book publisher Apress and the U.S. science publisher Copernicus.
