IT Books Online

The MIT Libraries provides two great resources for the MIT community to get the latest IT reference information available. Safari Tech Books Online and Books24x7 are excellent online sources for IT and other technical and business books. Both are accessible from off-campus with MIT certificates.

Safari Tech Books Online

Safari Tech Books Online at http://libraries.mit.edu/get/safari contains the popular O'Reilly books, such as the Definitive Guides, Essentials, and In a Nutshell series. At last check, the database included 327 books. Safari offers interesting search and retrieval options such as searching within a specific book, searching the contents of all books at once, or searching for code fragments. Navigation is simple with multiple options for cruising through content, including table of contents, an interactive index, hyperlinked text, and side navigation bars. Reviews are available to help evaluate each book. Safari has a concurrent user limit of 8, so if the session is unavailable try back again later.

Books 24X7

Books24x7 at http://libraries.mit.edu/get/books24x7 contains more than 2,800 electronic books from over 100 publishers, covering many technical disciplines and business reference books. Books24x7 offers many of the same search, retrieval, and navigation features as Safari, but also lets you personalize your experience when you register as a member. Through your account, you can set up a bookshelf. You can also add bookmarks within books to remember key places, annotate these bookmarks, and share them with other members. Books24x7 has a service to notify you by email when new books come in.