The Warburg Electronic Library (WEL) is conceived as an open platform for interdisciplinary discourses: As a data-based working space linked to the Internet the digital library offers general access to multimedia documents and configurations adapted to the individual scientific requirements and research methods. In the course of a five-year research project conducted jointly by the Department for Information and Communication Technology at the Technical University of Hamburg-Harburg and the Research Centre for Political Iconography (University of Hamburg, Department of Art History) at the Warburg Haus, the Picture Index of Political Iconography" was transformed into a digital multimedia library. Its structure is based upon the "MNEMOSYNE Bilder Atlas" compiled by the scholar Aby Warburg in the late 1920s to visualise his complex studies in cultural history. His network of images reflects the transformation of and interrelationships between ideas in the various fields of art, providing a 'pictorial memory' of European culture. Warburg's "gute Nachbarschaft der Bücher" additionally served as an inspiration in designing the searching tools. Fully licensed users can create their own digital library for structuring their search results and publishing via the Internet.For scientific purposes exclusively the following digital libraries are online now: - Bildindex zur Politischen Ikonographie and - Regentenbank. (index language: German)" [self-description]