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.

The URL is http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/ and is restricted to UCLA IP addresses.

History

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://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/ 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.

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.”

March. 3, 2009 email with 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.