Springer Book Archives

Springer Science+Business Media has started an extensive digitisation project, Springer Book Archives (SBA). The SBA initiative will include nearly all books that have been published since the 1840s. Springer expects that the book archives will contain around 65,000 titles.

The works in the digital archives will be available on the company’s platform SpringerLink along with all other Springer books, which have routinely been published in electronic and print versions since 2005. When this project is completed at the end of 2012, Springer will be able to offer more than 100,000 e-books on the platform.

Around 70 per cent of the books in Springer Book Archives are in English, nearly 30 per cent are in German and there are some Dutch-language titles.The books in Springer’s book archives comprise a total of 17 different imprints, including German economics books by Gabler, the US information technology publisher Apress and the US non-fiction imprint Copernicus. Medical books account for the largest share of the book archives, at over 20 percent.

'The Springer Book Archives initiative confirms Springer‘s commitment to reactivate valuable publications from the past for the scientific community. At Springer, a book will never die,  but “out of print” will. Up to now, our past titles have been hidden away in our in-house library, but thanks to innovative technologies they can be made available again. We have made significant investments in this project and are convinced that the scientific community will find it useful,' said Derk Haank, CEO of Springer Science+Business Media.