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Seattle Public Library (SPL) has O’Reilly subscription, called O’Reilly Complete Public Library.

Improve your computer and business skills with O’Reilly Complete Public Library. You can read more than 40,000 books on software, programming and business for free with your Library card using standard web browsers, with no due dates.

Seems many public libraries in the States do the same, from District of Columbia Public Library, San Jose Public Library to Madison Public Library. Most of them, except for SPL’s called “O’Reilly for Public Libraries”.

O’Reilly for Public Libraries is slightly limited from what O’Reilly offers. For example, you cannot create a personal account. Accounts seems ephemeral and highlights and notes won’t be saved. You cannot use O’Reilly’s iPad/Android apps. These limitation are summarized in ProQuest’s help page 1.

I’ve been having O’Reilly subscription from my ACM membership. Seems ACM’s one is still more “complete” than SPL’s one. Of course SPL’s one is completely free if you live in Seattle though.

That being said, as a former Japanese resident, I’d say that having O’Reilly subscription though a public library is awesome. Too good to be true, to be honest.


  1. I’m not totally sure about the connection between ProQuest and the public libraries. Is ProQuest the vendor who brings O’Reilly to the public libraries? ↩︎