Last updated 9th May 2008

Well, there are five books in ITIL version 3 and they are called.... Plenty of places to find that boring stuff. Start with Wikipedia.

You can obtain the ITIL v3 books as PDFs, i.e. downloaded softcopy Adobe books. Before you buy be aware that the PDFs, although searchable, cannot copy and paste text when quoting an extract from a book, which for me defeats one of only real advantages of softcopy. According to itgovernance "PDFs are not networkable, can only be printed once and cannot be copied, cut or pasted...any attempt to copy, cut, paste or move the PDF may result in its corruption...They can only be viewed using Adobe Acrobat 6.1 or 7 (not 8.0) and will need to be activated by visiting the Adobe DRM Activator website." Strike one.

The other advantage of softcopy is usually portability, but the ITIL v3 PDFs can only be installed on the one machine, which means they are only as portable as your laptop, as compared to the portability of a CD. Van Haren Publishing's itilbooks site says "Once downloaded the PDF is permanently stored on your PC. It can be used on another PC provided Adobe reader 6.01 or Adobe 7 has been installed, and by setting up a .Net Passport from the DRM activator site." Strike two.

Despite the massive reduction in production costs they don't cost any less than a printed book. Strike three. And even though they are digital, ITIL v3 PDF buyers don't get automatic updates. Strike four .. no wait, you're already out. Skip the PDFs.

You can also subscribe to online access to ITIL v3. The online subscription will also give you "Dynamic content, Easy navigation, Bookmarking, History, Cross-linking between chapters, Pop-up glossary of terms" and 50% off a hardcopy set of the books. Now for me the only benefit of the online service that I can see (as compared to cool geek features that I don't need) is "dynamic content", i.e. any updates to the text (so far as I am aware there haven't been any yet, and BOKKED shows very few important errors in the texts). This subscription service will cost you almost as much per annum than the books will to buy. Let me repeat that: you can buy a new set of hardcopy books every 18 months for less than the cost of subscribing online. So much for dynamic content. Strike one.

Another thing about online subscription (for me anyway) is that it is less convenient to read in bed or ... er.... other places of deep thought. Strike two. And I for one would still much rather read paper than pixels (maybe it is just my aging eyes). Strike three.

Which leaves the five books as books. Actually there are six books in ITIL version 3, including The Official Introduction to the ITIL Service Lifecycle, written by Sharon Taylor, as a summary of the other five. I think it is pretty good. Certainly a good place to start for those who are not keen to fork out more than five hundred green dollars for the five books.

Actually, as good a place to start with ITIL - and half the price - is Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam - The Official Study Aid. It's cheap, and the first edition has a couple of errors that luckily the IT Skeptic has tabulated for you.

In fact, if you are really on a budget, start with the free An Introductory Overview of ITIL V3.

The ITIL V3 Key Element Guides are now available. These may be a good place to start too: more of this after I've seen them. These are the pocket versions of the five core books. Thirty eight quid for the set of five. The V2 books produced by itSMF were good - let's see about these ones.

For those who want to start with something with real meat, look at Foundations of IT Service Management Based on ITIL V3. It is a condensation of the five core ITIL V3 books not a high level summary. It contains most (if not all) of the content of the Five in just one book and at an eleventh of the price! It achieves this in a number of ways:

• smaller font, more densely formatted
• eliminates all the tedious duplication in the five books (not to mention inconsistencies)
• simplification of some explanations
• omission of some material? I haven't found any yet

The IT Skeptic reviewed the Service Strategy book and reviewed Passing Your ITIL Foundation Exam and also reviewed Foundations of IT Service Management Based on ITIL V3.

IPESC have endorsed all five ITIL v3 core books (with one country holding out on one book). For those who are wondering, this means that itSMF International now approves of the books and gives them their official stamp, allowing the itSMF name and logo on the books. As if it was ever in doubt. Curiously IPESC did not get to review the Official introduction but the itSMF logo got bunged on there anyway. So much for process. The ITIL V3 Key Element Guides did undergo IPESC review.