Safari Trial 

  Enter Safari Books Online

Pilot Project is active through December 31, 2009

Suggest new books to add to CSU's subscription!

Safari® Books Online is a collection of tech books and computer manuals from some of the industry's most important publishers, including O’Reilly, Microsoft Press, and more. Topics include a wide variety of technologies including certification, enterprise computing, Java, Linus/Unix, Web development, Windows, XML, and more. Safari's powerful search engine features:

• Searching by keyword, phrase, author, ISBN, publisher, or category

• Relevancy-ranked results for both books and terms

• Cut-and-paste code fragments to save time and eliminate typos

Users can also browse all Safari Tech Books just as they would books in print.

FAQ

Hey, wait a minute – where did all the titles go?

The trial to Safari®, which included access to over 6, 200 titles, expired on December 15.  CSU has now moved into a year-long pilot project.

What on earth is the difference between a pilot project and a trial?  Aren’t you making the subscription to Safari way more difficult than it needs to be?

Safari® Books Online is comprised of over 6,200 titles, and the CSU Libraries only had enough funding to purchase access to ~320 titles for a year.  We wanted to be sure that we purchased the books that would be most heavily used by the CSU community, so we decided to ask you, our users, to help us select the titles to which we should subscribe. 

• Trial: From October 1- December 15, CSU had access to all 6, 200 Safari®.  The trial was publicized via Today@Colorado State and in some other venues, and users were encouraged to suggest titles that were of interest.  The CSU Libraries also carefully monitored the usage of the Safari® titles.  The most heavily used books during the trial were combined with the books that were requested by users to create a core collection of Safari® books.
  

• Pilot Project:  Safari® Books Online is a subscription service, so maintaining full access requires the Libraries to set aside ongoing funds to maintain access, much like we do for journal subscriptions.  The Libraries don’t get new funds for journals every year, but if new money becomes available, we always have requests for many more subscriptions than the new funds could purchase.  Usage or demand for a product is an important factor in deciding which requests get funded.  The Libraries has funded Safari for a year long pilot project so that we can monitor usage and determine whether there is a demand for these books within the CSU community.  The pilot will run through December 31, 2009,and during the year we will be keeping close tables on Safari® usage statistics and requests from users to add new books to the collection. 

What do you hope to learn from this pilot project?

We would like to learn whether Safari is a product that would be used by the CSU community, and we hope that this trial will help us demonstrate that computer science manuals are an important part of CSU’s collection. Hopefully this will lead to funding for Safari beyond the one-year pilot project.

Can I just suggest some titles for you to purchase?

Absolutely!  Please use this form to submit your title requests.  We can’t promise to purchase every title that is suggested, but we can promise to take ALL suggestions into consideration when we are making our purchase.

Previously you stated that we will only have access to the Safari titles for a year.  Can that be true?  Once we pay for the titles, shouldn’t we have access to the title forever?

Great question.  Safari does not allow us to purchase copies of individual books; we are purchasing access to the Safari service for one year.  For many years, Safari has been on a wish list of subscriptions that the CSU Libraries would like to purchase, but the costs have been prohibitive.  This year the Libraries received special funding to do a Safari pilot project.  If we can show that Safari is being heavily used by the CSU community, we can make a better argument to the university administration for continued funding. 

More Questions?? Please send us a comment using the box to the left.