Electronic books exist more than 50 years already and they are also present in Croatia. In the past, several Croatian e-book stores were in business, but today websites offering free e-books and libraries offering e-book lending are more prominent. The purpose of this thesis is presenting the past and present of electronic books with a focus on their presence and standing in Croatian libraries. In the first part of the thesis, the history and development of e-books in both in and outside Croatia is presented. The second part of the paper contains two research segments. The first segment is concerned with students' reading habits, their stance on e-books and the lending of e-books in libraries. From the results, it is possible to conclude that students are generally familiar with e-book lending services, but only a small number of them use those services. In the second research segment, the websites of public libraries from thirty of the biggest cities in Croatia are analyzed in order to determine if they offer e-book lending services and how they advertise those services. The results have shown that a large number of the analyzed libraries offer e-book lending services. Most of the libraries highlight those services on their websites prominently, but a significant number of them don't highlight them enough or at all.