The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of current developments in the area of electronic books and libraries, and to describe an on‐going research project. Following a discussion of the key terminology used in this field, a number of issues will be investigated: what an electronic library is; how this concept has evolved during the last twenty years; what an electronic book is; and the relationship between an electronic library and an electronic book. As a result of our research we have defined a new concept, the Virtual Electronic Library, and its basic components: the hyper‐book and the visual‐book. These are two forms of electronic books which are built from different sources: paper books and electronic texts respectively. The environments in which such electronic books are produced will also be described.
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