Hyper‐books and visual‐books in an electronic library

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.