JSTOR for books

BoingBoing links to a Safari Books Online closest offer: pick a free book for a month , plus 10% off a fee to the full version of the service. Looks good. In the basic encase, Safari gives you generous (not total, unless you pay more) access to a justly vast range of titles from “O’Reilly Media, John Wiley & Sons, Addison-Wesley, Peachpit Iron, Adobe Press, lynda.com and many more top publishers.” It looks like you can have 10 books ‘checked out’ per month. You have ‘slots’. Advantage there are extras and goodies of various sorts. Yearly regardless: $252. Monthly rate: $22.99. For me it doesn’t wholly make sense, but almost. I’m sure for a lot of people, and institutions, this makes add up to sense. Often when you are learning something new you would like to have not just one but five books (because you aren’t unfailing which Photoshop book will be best). And 18 months later there’s a new variant and you would like new books. (How many thick, obsolete technical titles do you have on your shelf? I have: enough.) It might become sense to subscribe for a few months when I’m learning something new, then unsubscribe for a year and subscribe again when the next innings of learning hits.

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