Safari Books Online provides access to more than 21,000 digital books and videos on topics ranging from programming to IT networking to project management to graphic design to business strategy. The content includes code snippets, certification preparation materials, practice exercises, training videos and much more. Users can search thousands of books simultaneously online, saving time and quickly finding the information they need.

Originally started in 2001, Safari Books Online was the result of a combination of two of the world’s most prominent technology publishers, O’Reilly Media, Inc. and Pearson Education.

The original goal of the company was to compile the best technology books from leading authors and publishers into an online database that technology, IT and management professionals could quickly and easily search for reliable, definitive answers to mission-critical questions. Since that earliest implementation, Safari Books Online has expanded in several ways:

• Available content now includes technology, business, creative, digital media and personal and professional development resources in book, video, exercise and even code snippets.
• From the original two founding publishers, the list of publishing partners has grown to well over 100, including over 85% of the world’s top technology publishers.
• Originally conceived of as a database of content, Safari Books Online is now a powerful interactive platform, providing tools that help users find, manage, assimilate and share information and knowledge.

With Safari Books Online, users can find exactly the information they need from a source they can trust, all in a fraction of the time they’d spend searching elsewhere. Its powerful search engine features:

• Searching by keyword, phrase, author, ISBN, publisher, or category
• Thumbnails of book covers in the hit list
• Relevancy-ranked results for both books and terms
• Hit lists of book chapters containing the search terms
• Keywords in context in the hit list
• Cut-and-paste code fragments to save time and eliminate typos

Users can browse content in Safari Books Online just as they would books in print. Each title contains a complete table of contents with chapter links for easy page-to-page browsing. All charts, graphs, and other images are included just as originally published, ensuring that users get total access to the entire range of content offered in each title.

Video content now available

Academic and public libraries with certain subscription packages can now upgrade their collection to include world-class online instructional videos.

The videos in this collection provide instruction on web design, software development, and graphics tools and techniques, along with training videos for software such as Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop, Mac OS X, Dreamweaver, Flash, Windows XP, and Microsoft Office.

Over 1,000 titles, delivering over 3,000 hours of training, with additional video content being added on an ongoing basis. The videos reside on the Safari Books Online platform, can be cross-searched with other Safari content, and possess the same search functionality as the books. You can learn an entire application from start to finish, or skip to a specific topic or snippet as opposed to watching the entire video. Each video is available in QuickTime, Adobe Flash, and Windows Media. Video titles include training from leading publishers, such as:

• Addison Wesley Professional
• Addison-Wesley
• Cisco Press
• New Riders
• O'Reilly Media, Inc.
• Peachpit Press
• Prentice Hall
• Que
• Sams