Does UCLA have free access to O'Reilly and Associates programming books online?

Yes, luckily enough for UCLA programmers, the Library maintains a subscription to O’Reilly and Associates Safari Tech Books Online service. This service allows searching the full text of many of their technical books. There is also an option to limit your search to code fragments, which is an excellent way to get sample programming code.

Update: This and other resources are available at https://oit.ucla.edu/training and you can get in via UCLA Login.

The URL is http://uclibs.org/PID/432785 and is restricted to UCLA IP addresses. That is, access is native on-campus, while off-campus access would require the UCLA VPN.

History

June 9, 2020, announcement from the California Digital Library

O’Reilly for Higher Education (OHE) now available for UC https://cdlib.org/cdlinfo/2020/06/09/oreilly-for-higher-education-now-available-for-uc/

Oct. 28, 2009 email from Anita Colby, Science and Engineering Library

The enhancements to the Safari interface took place overnight early this week, so all the campuses should now have access to the features mentioned below:

SAFARI
New Safari 6.0
Safari Books Online 6.0, scheduled to be released in October 2009, provides a major advance to the service.

  • Enhanced Usability / Optimized Search – The search functionality has been optimized to ensure that users can find what they need quickly and efficiently.
  • Value-Based Ratings / Customer Ratings – Safari 6.0 provides both an Amazon.com rating (where available) and a Safari Books online rating on all titles within the digital library. Now users can get the technology rating of peers, as well as a broader rating.
  • A Wealth of Knowledge Tailored to User Needs / Categorization – Safari has added the ability for users to categorize the material in its digital library according to their own preferences. Whether they want marketing, technology, and business, or Linux, Java, and OpenSource, users can now create and fill their own categories.
  • Improved Readability – With Safari 6.0, users have the ability to make inline notes in the actual text they are reading. They can now dog-ear or bookmark specific pages. They can make notes while reading on a given page, and they can share these notes and bookmarks with others – making Safari Books Online a more powerful learning and teaching tool.

March. 3, 2009 email from Anita Colby, Science and Engineering Library

“We have 30 seats shared by all UC campuses plus the California Digital Library staff. Our resource liaison says she hasn’t heard of any turnaways.

Oct. 27, 2005 email from Anita Colby, Science and Engineering Library

“The new contract extends from October 1, 2005-September 30, 2006 and will cover all titles from 2003-2005 plus newly released titles during the contract year. We have a contract for 28 concurrent ports for all campuses and the CDL.”

Nov. 5, 2003 email from Anita Colby, Science and Engineering Library

I am pleased to announce that a new eBook series on computer programming and technology related themes is now available to UCLA students, staff, and faculty. The entire Safari collection of O’Reilly books with publication dates from 2002 forward is now available as eBooks. You can find these books in Orion2 by author, title, or the keywords “Safari tech books online.” The disadvantage to this approach is that you loose the power of the Safari search interface; the advantage is that you only see the items available to you, not the entire Safari collection.

You can find this at http://uclibs.org/PID/432785 From a campus computer, you’ll “Welcome UCLA” on the far right. From off campus you can use BOL’s VPN Service to get a UCLA IP address. Click on Bookshelf for a list of our books.

There are only a defined number of ports for access by six campuses, so occasionally there may be no access when all ports are in use. After 10 minutes of no activity, the ports will reopen. The entire book including graphics is available to registered users for remote access at the six campuses listed, including UCLA.

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