Max Planck Society buys the entire Springer Book Archives

The Max Planck Society secures access to 110,000 books from almost 170 years of publishing history for its researchers

The Springer Book Archives contain the digital copies of nearly all the books published by Springer from 1842, when the publishing house was founded, up to and including 2004. The works are divided into 11 collections in English (around 56,000 titles) and five in German (around 54,000 titles). Licenses are available for each of these individual packages. The Springer Book Archives give today’s researchers access to key academic work from the past two centuries, and researchers can use these e-books on a wide variety of electronic devices.

The Springer Book Archives contain around 50 different imprints, although scientific works published by Springer Verlag account for the majority of publications. In addition, there are also titles by the longstanding engineering publisher Vieweg (now SpringerVieweg), the economics book portfolio Gabler (now SpringerGabler), the U.S. IT publisher Apress, and the U.S. science publisher Copernicus.

“The Springer Book Archives clearly demonstrate once again that today’s scientists stand on the shoulders of giants. Our digitized titles include publications by prestigious researchers and a number of Nobel laureates,” commented Focko van Berckelaer, Vice President Library Sales, Springer.  “All these works were out of print for a long time and are now available again online in the Springer Book Archives. I am delighted that the researchers and post-doctorate students at the Max Planck institutes now access this basic knowledge.”

“The Springer Book Archives books had only been available a short time before the Max Planck institutes signaled their interest in acquiring these titles,” explained Ralf Schimmer, head of Scientific Information Provision at the Max Planck Digital Library. “We would like to congratulate Springer on implementing this fantastic retro-digitization project, and we are pleased to be able to make this historical body of work available to researchers in the Max Planck Society in today’s digital working environment.”