Welcome to the Safari Jungle

Robby Russell writes "Paper books have a tendency to accumulate dust, take up large amounts of shelf space and be a painful reminder that you need to get rid of stuff when moving time comes and you find yourself packing up the same Pascal book for an eighth time. Granted, the book provides a level of self-accomplishment and it's always great to have your best books out in direct sight of anyone who may come over to your home or office. You know the type; the ones who are observant and notice the books that you want the world to know that you've read, as if you were to say, 'Been there, done that.' You can't tell me that you don't put some of them up intentionally. ;-)" Russell is taken with O'Reilly's floating-rental system called Safari; read on for his review of the system. (various) author (various) pages (various) publisher O'Reilly and other participating publishers rating 9 reviewer Robby Russell ISBN (various) summary Technical book rental is here, and you may find the convenience a compelling enough factor to give up the paper versions of the available titles.

O'Reilly has come up with an interesting solution to your lack of physical shelf space: a virtual bookshelf. Safari Bookshelf is a great resource for all things technical. They recently went over 1,000 titles available online, 24/7. Several publishers have joined forces with O'Reilly to provide so many titles. Que, Alpha, Sams, Microsoft Press (and O'Reilly itself) are a few of the big-name publishers that are part of Safari. Currently, 75% of all O'Reilly books are available through Safari. (With plans for adding 10+ books per month, the selection is growing rapidly, too.)

Safari subscriptions can be had in 10-, 20- or 30-slot varieties, depending on how much you care to read (and spend). Prices end up close to $1.50 per slot each month, with slight discounts if you buy annually rather than by the month. (A $9.99/month 5-slot shelf is available too, if you just want to test the waters.)

Recently, I had the privilege of giving Safari a test-run thanks to the generous offer made to user groups.

The website's navigation was fairly easy to grasp, and I was able to start searching for books as soon as I logged into the system. O'Reilly's made browsing pleasant, by listing the main categories and allowing you to branch down into subcategories to find the book you may or may not be looking for.

I was given a 10-book shelf to start my trial of Safari. This account would typically go at $14.99/month (or $159.99/year). The bookshelf is great. You can add a book to your bookshelf and you keep it there for 30 days, after which you can remove the book and replace it with a different one. So, you can have 10 books in your "shelf" at any given time, and switch no more than 10 books a month under this account level. That is 120 books a year for roughly $1.33/book. That's impressive.

It just so happened that I was currently working on migrating from Sendmail to Postfix recently and wanted to read up more on Postfix to see if there was more I could do to keep my server running happily. I typed in "postfix" in the search, and voila! 109 books were found with that word in the title or description. The search results allowed me to View by Book and/or View by Section (which I found really helpful by showing me a section of the book that contained the word "postfix"). I scanned a few more books in greater depth, looking at the Table of Contents of various books and even looking at the books' chapter previews. A lot of text to look at before I even decide on checking out a book. Being in a bookstore wouldn't have been this good: you can't search through a bookstore for a specific keyword in all texts and get back these kinds of results.

After reviewing a small handful of books, I felt comfortable with my decision and checked out the appropriately-titled book by Sams, "Postfix" by Richard Blum and added it to my bookshelf. The book will be on my bookshelf for the next 30 days. Immediately, I went over to My Bookshelf and found myself looking through the same text you would find in the paper version of this book (but in the font face and size that I set in my browser preferences). It lets me print a page, send the page as an email to someone, etc. I was reading about open relays, and added a bookmark to the page which shows up on the "My Safari" personal page listing all the books I have currently checked out. That page also shows recent searches, newly available books, public notes, etc. With a few clicks, I can go from my computer desktop to page 152 of The Perl Cookbook which is quicker than me looking through my library of paper books and finding my place.

I have since added six more books and visit My Safari page roughly 5+ times throughout my day to read more on various topics. All this content available anytime I need it, and I still have spaces left in my bookshelf. They do offer 5-slot Safari Bookshelf for those who don't need 10 books a month, which is probably where I would fall. The great thing is that this is very affordable. (After calculating the costs of all the books I had bought in the past year, I could have paid for and viewed roughly 232 books plus the 8 technical books I bought last year.)

On the downside, colleagues who come by my home or office won't see my new copy of MySQL Cookbook because it is online rather than on my shelf showing another O'Reilly animal. I might have to print out the covers and tape them to my old school books to deal with that for the time being, but I am sure that Safari Bookshelf is how I plan to spend money on technical documentation from now on.

If it were a Tom Robbins book however, I couldn't see myself sitting in a cozy chair reading it on a laptop; this idea only makes sense to me for technical information because I am sitting at my computer anyways -- and where else would I need technical documentation?

If this idea intrigues you, visit O'Reilly's Safari Bookshelf page. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Libraries

[SlayerDave]

I'm sorry, but reading a book on a computer just doesn't cut it for me. If I'm serious about a book, then I'll shell out the bucks and buy the damn thing. Otherwise, I'll hoof it down to the library and check it out. Libraries are cheaper than this Safari system and have the added benefit of not ruining your eyes and/or fraying your nerves by making you read a friggin book on your computer screen. Maybe one day I'll be more convinced by the concept of e-books, but until then, I'll stick to the dead-tree variety.

Re:Libraries

[kjd]

I agree and prefer dead-tree format, but it's useful to have an online copy for reference while you're actually doing the work. There is a "search code snippets" option that lets you search for code to copy/paste/modify, which is naturally more helpful in an electronic format.

Also it makes for cheap reviews of books you're interested in purchasing, if you're the type who buys a lot of tech books from the publishers included.

Re:Libraries

[maddboyy]

Yes, dead trees and libraries are great. However, you seem to miss out on some of the benefits from the Safari/e-book system. eBooks are great for technical areas because you can cut and paste code examples while you're working on your project. Also, it's much easier to use a computer to search for terms in a book than to try to scan them by eye/hand. Furthermore, one of the great benefits of Safari is that errata/updates are linked directly on the pages. Paper books are great, but you shouldn't underestimate the convenience of ebooks.

Re:Libraries

[Rudeboy777]

I agree, but perhaps Safari's niche won't be replacing their dead tree counterparts, but acting as a try-before-you-buy library. Your local library probably doesn't buy a copy of every new tech book that comes out, and even if it did you can't perform a search against a shelf of books.

The monthly fee isn't peanuts, but if I'm starting a new project using a language I haven't used yet, I can fork over the 20 bucks for 5 books and find the best Python book out there, then try a few others as well.

If this takes off, hopefully it will raise eyebrows at the MPAA and RIAA as to how an online service should be run (printing allowed, emailing content to friends, etc)

Re:Libraries

[Anonymous Coward]

What library do you go to that has all the latest technical books? I'm lucky if my local library has a "How-to learn MS-DOS in 24 hours".

Re:Libraries

[SlayerDave]

I'm responding to the responses.

First, the "technical" books I'm most interested in are math books, which don't suffer the troubling problem of being out of date the minute they hit the press. I am also a programmer, so I like and need books on central programming topics, such as the C++ standard library, numerical algorithms, and computational geometry. These, also, are not "bleeding edge" topics and so are likely to be in my library.

Second, my library is not the local neighborhood library, but the Science and Engineering Library at Boston University (I'm a grad student here). It takes me all of thirty seconds to punch in the author into the library's search website to find out if the book has been checked out already. If it has and I need it badly, I can just put in a recall on the book. Also, as a graduate student, I get to check out books for 19 weeks. After 3 weeks, they are subject to recall, but that is not a big deal. Since this is a science and engineering library at a major university, it is relatively well-stocked with many recent CS/tech/programming books.

As for searching, most books have indices and tables of content. These radical advances in information management work surprisingly well - try them sometime!

Finally, I agree that if I were a professional coder or administrator working in IT, I would probably have a need for the lastest book on sendmail or MySQL or buzzword X. If that were the case, Safari might be for me. Since that is not the case, I'll pass on Safari. Besides, as other posters have noted, personal dead-tree libraries can be quite impressive. I hope mine is one day.

Re:Libraries

[JudasBlue]

You are lucky to have a library that has up-to-date tech books at your disposal. The public library system in Berkeley CA does not offer this luxury. A couple of 6 year old books on making Dynamic Web Pages For Big Profit On Your Home Selling Web Site!!! seem to be the only technical books in the stacks.

I am not a big fan of ebooks in general, but I like the safari system for giving me up to date technical information on whatever I am working on for a yearly price equal to two books. If I am using a book very frequently for a long period as a reference, I want a dead tree copy of my own. But in most cases I am heavily into a tech book for about three weeks, learn the concepts and then the book becomes another dead weight on my shelves, useful mainly for flattening out my tournament vinyl chessboard when it starts rolling up too much at the edges.

Re:Libraries

[jallen02]

I have a 10 slot bookshelf to Safari because... the average useful lifetime of the books I read is not very great.

Certain topics change rapidly. Shelling out 50 bucks for a book that will be out-dated in a year is annoying.

I have a well-worn C Reference manual that has served me well over the past 7 years. The content in the book is still perfectly relevant and useful.

I have Java books that are good for making a fire, and little else.

I read a lot of programming books, some of the time on more esoteric/fast moving topics. Being able to have the book for a month and then drop it after it has gotten me started/further with a topic is a godsend. I then only need the books for reference. Usually I can live without a book as a reference since most of the libraries/languages I work with have some sort of reference materials. I really just like books for filling in knowledge gaps.

I calculated it. I would have spent at least 500 dollars on books in the last 4 months without Safari. With Safari I spent maybe 45 bucks(the first month was free... I was hooked after that). The knowledge and benefit to me was exactly the same. It makes it difficult to justify the spendings when Safari fits very well with my programming and learning style.

Some people like to cozy up to a good ole dead tree. I like to also. But when the knowledge is to be had cheaper, I can't refuse the cheaper solution. (With an LCD monitor my eyes no longer get the frying in place feeling, reading a book online doesn't bother me now).

Anyhow, that is my draw to Safari.

(Not to mention the Safari people have been real responsive when I find bugs in the service :)

Jeremy

Re:Paper books still useful for display

[binaryDigit]

When I walk into my professors office, they have two walls of metal bookshelves stacked to the wall with books. It's like walking into their mind.

Right, but what the article poster alluded to and what others are mentioning is that often times the majority of books that one owns are not ones that they have read. In many ways ones bookshelf is like ones online persona, you are free to appear to be whoever you want. So if I wanted to look like a c/c++ god, I'd have things like K&R and Stroustroup, and NOT some "dummies guide", even if I don't know how to properly format a 'for' statement. I always take one's bookshelf with a grain of salt, esp if it's full of books that look like my old college text books did (i.e. more pristine than the ones on the bookstore shelf).

Re:Speaking for myself

[Bull999999]

Go to a computer book store and get some old books on clearance for a couple of bucks for a cheap way to fill that bookshelf.

Re:Paper books still useful for display

[Geopoliticus]

I'm proud to say my books are trashed. You should see my copy of the camel book, it's cover is mangled and held on with tape. The pages are dog eared and wrinkled. Not to mention the book is about twice it's original thickness packed with printed programs and post-it note book marks. One can defiantly tell if a book has been read by it's condition.

Could be so much more useful

[mcgroarty]

Safari could be so much more useful if it'd focus more on acting like an electronic book and less like acting like a website.

Could we please please please have a way of freely adjusting the font size when reading Safari books?

Please please please? I'm sure these are the webmasters' favorites, but they're not in line with other sites, so we have to adjust our fonts on visiting and leaving Safari.

And could we please please please have a way of reading just the book, no banners, side columns, etc... just the content? I know you can collapse the side content, but that saves vertical space where horizontal space is the problem.

Safari's layout sucks extra bandwidth and is pretty painful to navigate on a wireless PDA or a small tablet, where both the metered bandwidth and the small display space are at a premium. This kills all the joy of Safari for those of us who like to read electronic books on the bus and in bed.

Prefer the CD-Bookshelves myself

[PunchMonkey]

I tried out safari, but for myself, I was quite happy sticking with the CD Bookshelves. For the cost of a couple O'Reilly books you get ~6 on CD-ROM (plus one in print as well) in HTML format. Slap that puppy on your webserver and you can access it wherever you go. I'd usually sell the print copy on ebay to recoup some of the cost.

My biggest gripe with safari was the layout and the speed vs. CD Bookshelves. The CD Bookshelves are as fast as your computer and the pages take up the full browser screen - none of those menus to get in your way.

Now all I need is a 3' x 3' monitor...

[crashthud]

Great idea - current books I can access as long as they're useful (everyone out there with obsolete books being used as footstools/table levelers/bookshelf ends, raise your hand).

But my desk usually has a pile of books open, face up or down or with pencils or yellow stickys marking pages. I'm still looking for a way to map this to a single too-small-already computer screen.