From my own long tenure as a college student living below the poverty level (~ 9+ years!) I always thought students were by default ingenious when it came to finding free food and other good deals. Thus, I frequently am surprised to discover soon to graduate School of Computing seniors and even graduate students (who are otherwise way smarter than their profs) who go to B&N or amazon.com and spend $20 – $40 on a recently published but soon to be obsolete O’Reilly or Apress book when they can read it online for free via the GVSU Library portal.

In GVSU’s fine tradition of sustainability and for the advancement of science, I’ve decided to post this short screencast tutorial. Note that this tutorial is for the GVSU community only. If you are not a current student or faculty member at GVSU you can get “free” access to the Safari Online Bookshelf by becoming a member of the Association of Computer Machinery.

The basic steps are as follows:

1. Visit http://www.gvsu.com/library and enter the search term “safari”.
2. Click on the link “Safari Technical Books” displayed right at the top of the search results.
3. If you are off campus you will have to enter your GVSU network credentials.
4. You should now be on the Safari Online Bookshelf portal authenticated via GVSU.

Note that while not every technical book you’ll want to read is available on this site, you’ll find plenty to keep you busy for a while. Pass it on, stop wasting your $$, hug a GVSU librarian, and start reading today!