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Over the last few decades, technological development has had a major impact on libraries. Nowadays many libraries use electronic support for operations such as acquiring and cataloguing material, searching, and retrieval. Information technology is an aid for both the librarian, in order to organise the material, and for the user in order to gain access to the broad storehouse. Information is still physically stored in the library. This represents an intermediate step in the process of library automation which leads to a completely electronic library, where a timely provision of selected materials to individuals, when and where they need them, is guaranteed. An electronic library houses different kinds of electronic information: in addition to text, there is an extensive use of multimedia collections, such as sound archives, video material, slide collections and so on. The electronic library is the result of complex changes which have affected and which still affect the publishing world (Barker 1994; Clement 1994; Raitt 1993).

This paper presents hyper‐lib, a model for an electronic library. The hyper‐lib philosophy is based on reproducing the spatial environment of a physical library, in order to exploit users' knowledge of the physical domain in using the electronic system. In the library environment, rooms, shelves, books and services are reproduced by simulating a three‐dimensional environment, where the user can interact with a collection of documents as if he or she were in a physical library. In addition to the physical library features, the hyper‐lib introduces a number of new properties, which result from its non‐physical nature and allow some of the limitations of traditional libraries, such as availability of books and delivery time, to be overcome. The hyper‐lib books are available in electronic form, following the hyper‐book model, which is based on the book metaphor. A formal definition of the hyper‐lib model as a dynamic system is given. The hyper‐lib model is defined in terms of structural and functional components. Moreover, the functional behaviour, i.e. how the system evolves under the effects of the functional components, is presented. The library structural components include the book collection, the librarian, the access mechanisms etc. The functional aspect is indispensable for describing the use of a dynamic and interactive system. In particular, a number of operators, which represent user services, allow the user to change the system state. We distinguish among general services, which are offered in any room of the library, and specific services, which are specific to a particular object or room in the library, such as the librarian, the catalogues, the hyper‐books, the book shelves etc.

This paper presents a model for an electronic book (hyper‐book). Hyper‐books are electronic books defined on the basis of the paper book metaphor. This metaphor guarantees ease of use and understanding, as the paper counterpart is a well known concept. The hyper‐book maintains many of the features of paper books, in terms of interface design and available tools (orientation, navigation, personalisation) and provides added‐value that exploits the technology underlying it, such as searching, links and history mechanisms. We give a formal definition of the hyper‐book model as a dynamic system. The hyper‐book model is defined in terms of structural and functional components. Further, how the system evolves under the effects of these functional components is presented. The structural components reflect the book subdivision in pages, and the page subdivision in elements such as text, figure etc. The functional aspect is indispensable for describing the use of a dynamic and interactive system. In particular, a number of operators, which represent reader services, allow the user to change the system ‘state’. This simple model is intuitive, general and easy to extend. The hyper‐book model has been implemented in a working system, and evaluated with a group of users. The evaluation has confirmed that the adoption of the book metaphor is very effective, as it guarantees ease of using and understanding the system. The use of the hyper‐book model for organising and presenting electronic documents could have a considerable impact in the context of electronic publishing. A system, based on this model, could have a large applicability and diffusion in several fields such as electronic libraries, thanks to its user‐friendly interface.