Things Change, People Change, Libraries Go on: E-books or Not E-books?

The aim of this paper is to describe how e-books work and how they can be managed in a scientific or research library; specifically, to discuss the viability of e-lending. The results were a little bit surprising and even slightly confusing. Unquestionably, e-books have enormous potential, but much of this potential is untapped. Although there is widespread awareness of the advantages of e-books among users and librarians, problems and challenges are not as well known. After a discussion of the potential advantages, I will concentrate on some of the real drawbacks of e-books.