If you can't resist the urge to buy shiny new O'Reilly books every time you are within 1 mile of a Barnes & Noble or a Borders, and you are often restraining yourself from purchasing a bunch of new books on [amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&camp=1789&tag=logicaldiscon-20&creative=9325&path=http://amazon.com/)(then click on the amazon link and buy lots of stuff so I can get referral fees and feed my own demons!) Okay, that's not really the point although I wouldn't mind a few extra bucks toward my Mexico fund. The point is, I have the same problem, I always want to get new books, often the technologies will help me with my work. And the biggest part of the problem is these books are always between 30 and 60 dollars each.
So if you want help resisting this urge to spend money, go to your library and get a library card. There are some good books there, but that is not the only reason. In the [Buck's County Community College Library](http://www.bucks.edu/library/) you have electronic access to the O'Reilly Safari collection. And you don't actually need a card to get in there to use it, just have to drive there. Also if you have a card for any Pennsylvania library you can get to [Access PA Power Library](http://www.powerlibrary.net/) which gives you access to a lot of stuff you would ordinarily have to pay for. Well in this case you are paying for it with tax money, but you aren't using it. Probably the best feature of the Power Library is access to [NetLibrary](http://www.netlibrary.com/) which is chock full of stuff, including some technical books (A search for books with the word "programming" in the title published between 2000-2005 resulted in 49 books.) The downside is you need to read the books on your screen, but they are PDFs so I can read on my Linux desktop.
I can only speak for PA but I am sure that many other states have similar deals, and it can't hurt to go to the library and check it out.