In recent years, the spread of ebooks has grown exponentially. 24/7 availability, portability, the advanced tools offered by platforms make this product particularly interesting for academic libraries, which are in an experimental phase with regard to the selection and acquisition of ebooks.
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The article analyzes three platforms (EBL, Ebrary, EBSCO), to find out whether an Italian medium-sized university library can buy foreign titles in electronic rather than paper, and under what conditions. It provides information about titles catalog, business models, features available. The cut is practical/experimental, since the comparison among the platforms is based on a set, used as a representative sample, of 150 monographs, published in the last 5 years by different publishers and purchased on paper.