Electron- and neutrino-nucleus scattering

I review the main features of the nuclear response extracted from electron scattering data. The emerging picture clearly shows that the shell model does not provide a fully quantitative description of nuclear dynamics. On the other hand, many body approaches in which correlation effetcs are explicitely taken into account lead to a satisfactory account of electron scattering observables. The possibility of exploiting the knowledge acquired from electron scattering to reduce the systematic uncertainty of neutrino oscillation experiments is outlined.