Safari Tech Books Online on trial

For the month of March (1st - 31st) we have a trial of Safari Tech Books online.

Safari has the complete text of selected books from excellent IT publishers like O'Reilly, Addison-Wesley, Sams, and more. You can browse for specific titles, or search across the whole collection to find sections or chapters on your topic. Many of these books are useful 'how-to' guides to programming or using IT systems.

The trial will be IP-address based so it will be available on campus only from
http://proquest.safaribooksonline.com/?uicode=BATH. (edit: now also off-campus from here)

There are training materials available from Proquest at
http://www.proquest.co.uk/training/safari/index.html or I can help you to get started, just drop me an email or phonecall (ext. 5809).

Although this trial is for a product largely composed of IT books, there is a team in the library working on plans for future trials from other ebook providers that cover other subjects or are multi-disciplinary. This is a subject that inspires a multitude of questions, not the least being:

How does the electronic product compare with the print product? Does the print product have frequent new editions released on topics which are evolving rapidly (such as IT), would it be better served with online versions?
What's the possibility for integratation with content on the new VLE Moodle?
Could we replace short loan titles (frequently these are required textbooks) with ebook subscriptions? Would that improve access for students to these titles?
How does the cost of electronic versus print compare?
Do we have access in perpetuity?
Are there other products you would like to trial?

That's probably just the tip of the iceberg! I am completely open to suggestion or comments on the future of ebooks and I'm happy to offer training to staff or students in order to improve feedback.
There's also a news announcement (from Wednesday 1 March 2006) on the library website with a link to the trial.