STM publisher Springer Science+Business Media, Germany, has reached a milestone by publishing its 30,000th eBook in January 2009. Originally launched in 1996, SpringerLink provides students and researchers with electronic access to the largest collection of eBooks; more than 1,500 peer-reviewed Springer journals; as well as 18,000 protocols for laboratories. The eBook Collection comprises more than 140 reference works and over one thousand book series.
The Springer eBook Collection was introduced in July 2006 with 10,000 titles and recently, the number of available titles tripled and reached 30,000 eBooks. The company's goal is to add about 5,000 titles each year to the collection.
Springer boasts one of the most liberal purchasing models of digital content currently available. The company allows unlimited simultaneous access to eBooks for members of the purchasing library community. The eBooks' PDF and HTML documents are fully searchable and can be downloaded and printed. In addition, once a library purchases Springer's eBook Collection, they own the book content for their use in perpetuity. Libraries can either purchase a complete collection of all Springer titles from a copyright year or one or more of 13 distinct topic categories including engineering, medicine, computer science and mathematics.
The Springer eBook Collection provides MARC 21 records, a standardised form of electronic cataloging records. Recently, Springer also launched MyCopy, which allows a library's registered patrons to order softcover copies, for their personal use, of those Springer eBooks that the library has purchased.
