The aim of the work is to give basic information and describe issues of authorship, copyright, digitization, and see what the situation is regarding the electronic material of Croatian libraries. Libraries in Croatia are working on the digitization of materials, mostly from their own holdings and thereby keep an eye on the provisions of the law on copyright. The work consists of eleven chapters. The first deals with the problems of authorship. It then gives a historical overview of copyright. The third chapter engages in the European legislation on the basis of which the Croatian legislation was made, the next chapter lays out the law on copyright and related rights. Public lending of copyright works is the theme of the fifth chapter. After that, the paper discusses the impact of information technology on cultural institutions, ways of digitization and digitization itself. The final chapters provide an overview of the status of electronic materials in Croatian libraries, and the national library, and the repositories of academic, National and University Library and libraries of elementary schools in Rijeka.