I received the following e-mail today:

  On February 9, 2009 ACM will be replacing some book titles in our
  Safari Online Books Collection with new titles, including titles
  that have been requested by ACM Members.  In choosing which titles
  to remove, we look for the ones that are used the least often.

  Unfortunately, according to a recent usage report, some of these
  titles were on your bookshelf.

  *** Please remove these titles before February 9, 2009. ***

  ================================================
  Effective Java™: Programming Language Guide

  ================================================

  If you fail to remove the titles by the deadline, you will notice
  that the "slots" for the removed books will still be counted
  against your bookshelf, but you will no longer be able to access
  the books.  At that point, we will need to refer your case to the
  Safari Customer Support desk.

That’s from the Association for Computing Machinery (“Advancing Computing as a Science & Profession”). Firstly, I should state that the ACM’s online books facility is an excellent service that justifies the membership fee on its own. But surely there is a better way for them to perform this update than requiring potentially every single user to logon and manually perform this task?

I don’t know if it’s the ACM or O’Reilly who would be responsible but, whoever it is, they already know which users are affected and which books are involved.  I refuse to believe that this process could not be automated.

The reason they are removing Effective Java from the library is that they are replacing it with Effective Java 2nd Edition.  The path to full customer satisfaction ends with them just swapping one for the other on my bookshelf.  I shouldn’t need to get involved.

I particularly like how they make it sound like it would be my fault if they had to refer me to the Safari Customer Support desk.  They also do a good job of making that fate sound a lot more sinister than it should.