Alcademics

I am a proud user and supporter of libraries, both the San Francisco Public Library, and a membership library where my office is located: the Mechanics Institute Library. Lately I have been starting to use their online book check-out systems more. You download an app and then you can read ebooks available for check-out within the app.

Not every book in the library is available as an ebook, 0f course, but out of curiousity I decided to see how many cocktail books are available for online check-out at the San Francisco Public Library. The number was a surprising 203. Some of these are a bit off topic, and there are a lot of crappy cocktail books, but I think you'll find that some of the very best and most important books are available for check-out. Better yet, when you have a book on an e-reader that means the text is searchable.

I often want to search for some obscure sub-topic within books but don't want to repurchase all my books on Kindle or whatever again. So I can just log into my library account, take out a book there, and then use that to search. Sweet. 

To use the online system, residents of California can stop into a library and get a card, then can use it online from that point on. You only have to renew it every four years, and currently you can do that online. 

Just for fun, here are screenshots of some of the most notable (and a few just for fun) books at the SFPL.