University students are to be given free access to electronic books in an effort to make more use of technology.

Students of business and management, engineering, medicine and media studies will have access to a range of e-books from October 2007 under the pilot programme. The books will be made available to all universities, who will have a choice of whether or not to offer them to students through academic libraries.

Ebooks can be read on computers, handheld devices and dedicated readers, but their take-up at universities has been limited by the small number of titles currently on offer.

Joanna Ball, of Trinity College Library, Cambridge, said the library could not provide all the ebooks it wanted. She said: “Our problems lie with the unwillingness of academic publishers to make available the key titles on our list.”

The scheme is being run by the Joint Information Systems Council (Jisc) , which manages the use of computers in higher education across the country. Jisc is in talks with academic publishers to get them to offer their books to universities at discount rates for a two year trial period. The council says it will use the trial programme to collect information on students' research needs.

Lorraine Estelle of Jisc said: "Ebooks have enormous potential in education. The project is all about exploring the possibilities of ebooks to make core texts available to as many students as possible."