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Review - Safari Bookshelf
Checking out Safari

By Andrew Brosnan
Posted Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Safari Bookshelf Related info: Safari Bookshelf

Safari is an electronic reference library for programmers and IT professionals. Safari lets you search, read, browse and download chapters from a library of thousands of technical books. There are an impressive number of publishers on Safari including Addison Wesley, Adobe Press, Cisco Press, Java/Sun MicroSystems, Microsoft Press, New Riders, O'Reilly, Peachpit Press, Que, Sams and more.

Safari works by allowing users to add books to their 'Bookshelf'. Once a book is on your Bookshelf, you have access to the entire book, cover to cover. You can continue to add books to your Bookshelf until it is full. Subscriptions are available in different Bookshelf sizes - 5, 10, 20, etc. You can swap in new books for older books on your Bookshelf, however, books must remain on your Bookshelf for 30 days before they can be swapped out or removed from your Bookshelf.

The biggest concern I had when considering using an online bookshelf was that I like having the physical book to hold and read. Call me old fashioned, but I've heard this same concern from plenty of others. There is something nice about flipping through a book, feet up on your desk, dog-earing the pages. :-) Not to mention how smart it makes you look to have a bookshelf loaded with technical books near your desk. On the other hand, there are lots of obvious advantages to books online including the ability to search, having the most up-to-date info, being able to copy and paste code examples, etc. I decided to give it a try.

My first reaction was that I didn't like having to wait for pages to load as I 'flipped through' the books. However, I quickly realized that this wasn't how I used books, but rather how I perused them. Additionally, most if not all of the online books contain an entire chapter or significant sections per webpage, so the need to 'flip' was minimal. Further as I started to use the search feature more, the need to flip was reduced even more.

Pretty soon I found myself getting hooked. Take a Cookbook style book for example. The ability to search combined with the ability to cut and paste proved wickedly handy. I might never need to write code again! ;-) Often when I work on a project, 70-80% of it might be dealing with some core technology, with the remaining 20-30% being peripheral technologies, some of which I might be less familiar with. This is where the online Bookshelf really shines. To be able to search through literally thousands of books, get instant relevant results and then have that reference available electronically is very powerful. Would I want to buy all of these books? No way! Is it handy to have them at my fingertips when needed? You bet!

Then one day something I didn't expect happened. I was working on a project and wanted to use a newer feature of a language. I thought to reach for a hard copy of a book on the subject when I realized that the feature in question wouldn't be covered in my well worn book. One of my favorite books was <gasp> out of date! My mind slowly turned to my Safari Bookshelf, and the image of the shiny new version of the book just waiting to be placed on it. Could I actually allow myself to do this? Could I check out a copy of a book on Safari that was already sitting on my office bookshelf, just because of a measly new feature or two? I would be alright as long as I didn't tell anyone.

After a while I realized the obvious, just because I use an online bookshelf doesn't mean that I will be giving up buying books. I still enjoy putting my feet up on my desk and flipping through pages of a book. The Safari Bookshelf is a powerful, time saving tool, and I'll continue to use it as such.

For more information on Safari visit:
http://safari.oreilly.com
As of this writing, a two week free trial was available.

The use of the camel image in association with the Perl language is a trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Used with permission.
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