O’Reilly adds hundreds of new titles to SafariU Library

Web-based publishing tool lets instructors and trainers design and produce their own textbooks from expanded library of digitized content

(PRWEB) October 12, 2005 -- The most comprehensive collection of remixable content available to CS and IT instructors just got bigger. O’Reilly Media, the nation’s largest independent publisher of premium computer books, has added hundreds of new titles to its SafariU service. A web-based publishing tool with close to 2,000 registered users, SafariU lets instructors and trainers design and produce their own textbooks from a vast library of digitized content.

New imprints added to the SafariU service include Cisco Press, authorized publisher of books for Cisco certification study and network technology learning; New Riders Publishing, known for exceptional Web, graphics, security, game programming and rich media titles; Que Publishing, famous for its range of titles from the "Absolute Beginner" and "10 Minute Guide”; and Sams Publishing which publishes the highly regarded "Teach Yourself," "Unleashed," and "Developer's Library" series.

SafariU titles now number over 2,200 as these new imprints join the core collection from Addison-Wesley Professional, Prentice Hall PTR, and O’Reilly. With new books and publishers coming online all the time and a 5,000-strong periodical database, SafariU gives educators unrestricted access to the most up-to-date content repository in the discipline. Each item is parsed to the section level, so users can select as much or as little material as they want from as many sources as they need to compile both printed textbooks and online syllabi.

“Increasing SafariU’s already expansive multi-publisher database gives instructors and trainers the most complete and current course material to choose from,” said CJ Rayhill, general manager of SafariU. “SafariU is changing the textbook publishing industry by transferring the publisher's authority to the instructor and allowing content to be mixed and matched from multiple sources,” Rayhill said. SafariU beta tester Professor Kent Sandoe from California State University, Chico, concurs, predicting “the textbook industry is about to go through a major revolution.”

Educators pay nothing to use SafariU. A SafariU textbook costs their students 16 cents per page, including the cover and binding, which puts the price of a 200-page textbook at $32, plus bookstore markup. A course subscription to SafariU’s online resources is less than $10 per month per student. In both cases, students get precisely targeted course content in a much more cost-effective package than the traditional textbook publishers can offer. More information about SafariU is available at safariu.com.

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