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Abstract
The University of California's California Digital Library (CDL) formed an Ebook Task Force in August 2000 to evaluate academic libraries' experiences with electronic books (e-books), investigate the e-book market, and develop operating guidelines, principles and potential strategies for further exploration of the use of e-books at the University of California (UC). This article, based on the findings and recommendations of the Task Force Report [1], briefly summarizes task force findings, and outlines issues and recommendations for making e-books viable over the long term in the academic environment, based on the long-term goals of building strong research collections and providing high level services and collections to its users.

Introduction
What will make e-books a viable part of academic library collections? What features, rights, business models, hardware and software standards are needed to meet the goals of large academic library systems to support open scholarly exchange? The University of California's California Digital Library formed an EBook Task Force in August 2000 to investigate the e-book market and develop guidelines, principles and strategies for making e-books a viable part of the University's digital collections. Primarily concentrating on the commercial availability of e-books, the Task Force researched the state of the e-book market by participating in e-book vendor trials, conducting literature searches, attending conferences and workshops, and surveying several academic libraries about their e-book experiences. This article summarizes the Task Force findings about the status of the current e-book market and technologies, and some of the experiences of other academic libraries. It also highlights elements and strategies we determined to be important for future academic use of e-books.

While electronic books and texts have been available for some time for selected public domain titles,...