April 8, 2015

This service is the home to e-books from publishers such as OReilly, PeachPit, Prentice Hall, Adobe, Manning, Microsoft, Wiley, and many more. Most are how-to information technology manuals. But a significant minority cover subjects in business, project management, and engineering also with the how-to orientation. A few questions have cropped up recently and the answers seemed worth repeating here. Thanks to the Proquest tech help, and the Purdue OWL website for APA citation details.

Question:
Does Drexel subscribe to all the 37,000 books found in the Safari Online collection (see here to browse online or to download a full spreadsheet of their holdings see here.)

Answer:
Drexel Libraries subscribes to a subset of the full Safari content, equal to roughly 800 titles. If you do not find a technical manual in our collection from one of Safari's participating publishers, or you find something on the Safari Books website we do not have, please email liberes@drexel.edu to request the title gets added. The participating publishers do not make all their books available through Safari.

Question:
Where is the CD/DVD-ROM or online content for my book?

Answer:
Many books are published with a CD/DVD-ROM or related online content included. Safari Books Online refers to that content as 'Extras.' If the publisher has provided us with the additional content for a book , you can find it on the Extras tab on the catalog page for the title. Sometimes publishers opt to host the additional material on their own site, or not to provide it at all. If you have a question about Extras content for a specific book please contact our customer service department at #800-889-3358 (North America) or via the web form here: http://support.proquest.com/proquest/apex/contactussubmitcase?l=en_US

Question:
How do you cite e-books on Safari?

Answer:
Most writing styles require author, title, and publication date, all of which are available on the catalog page. Citing the location of the chapter within a book can be done by use of the URL button found at the top of the Content Reader.

This is the page of the book within Safari Books Online, and it may not always correspond to the page number of the original hard copy book.   

Since you are citing the online version you should cite the page number and URL as they appear in Safari Books Online. Online versions of technical documents frequently have different page numbers than print versions. The purpose of the citation is to point users to the correct online page, not duplicate the numbering of the original printed document.

Additional information on citing online sources can be found at http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/mlastyle_cite_an_ebook or https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

Electronic Books (APA Style)

Electronic books may include books found on personal websites, databases, or even in audio form. Use the following format if the book you are using is only provided in a digital format or is difficult to find in print. If the work is not directly available online or must be purchased, use 'Available from,' rather than 'Retrieved from,' and point readers to where they can find it. For books available in print form and electronic form, include the publish date in parentheses after the author's name. For references to e-book editions, be sure to include the type and version of e-book you are referencing (e.g., '[Kindle DX version]'). If DOIs are available, provide them at the end of the reference.

Example:
De Huff, E. W. (n.d.). Taytay's tales: Traditional Pueblo  Indian tales. Retrieved from  http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/dehuff/taytay/taytay.html