It aims to present the history of Switzerland in the form of an encyclopaedia, published both on paper and on the internet, in three of the country's national languages: German, French and Italian.

Since the time of the illustrated chronicles of Diebold Schilling the Elder in the fifteenth century, numerous historical works have appeared in Switzerland: the Chronicon Helveticum by Aegidius Tschudi (1569) contains around a thousand documents,[1] the twenty volumes of the encyclopaedic dictionary Allgemeines Helvetisches, Eydgenössisches, Oder Schweitzerisches Lexicon (General Helvetic, Federal or Swiss Lexicon) were written by Zurich banker and politician Johann Jacob Leu [fr] between 1747 and 1765.

[2] followed by the Dictionnaire géographique et statistique de la Suisse (Geographical and Statistical Dictionary of Switzerland) by Markus Lutz [fr].

[4] Edited by Victor Attinger [fr] from Neuchâtel, it was a financial failure, mainly because of the lack of supervision of the authors, who were largely recruited by the cantonal archivists associated with the project.

[2] As early as the 1950s, several personal initiatives - including those of Federal Councillors Philipp Etter in 1958 and Hans Peter Tschudi a few years later - were launched with the aim of creating a successor to the DHBS, whose financial failure, which had by then caused the bankruptcy of its publishing company, was holding back various publishers and historians from embarking on a new adventure, according to historian Marco Jorio [de], editor-in-chief of DHS, quoted by newspaper Le Temps.

Such was the success of this online prototype that the Foundation Board decided, in autumn 1997, not to release the first paper volume in 1998 as planned, but to change the sequence of publications and start with the website before publishing the first book.

The encyclopedia is published simultaneously in three of Switzerland's national languages: German (Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, HLS, in red), French (Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse, DHS, in blue) and Italian (Dizionario Storico della Svizzera, DSS, in yellow).

[12] The printed dictionary comprises 3,200 articles on regional biographies, places and events; the first volume appeared at the end of 2010, the second in 2012 : The e-LIR website has been online since 2004.

[12] The staff who produced the dictionary fall into two categories: the forty or so employees of the foundation in Berne or at the Bellinzona and Chur branches, the freelance collaborators who include 75 translators, a hundred or so advisors working at various Swiss and foreign universities, as well as in archives throughout the country, and above all almost 2,500 authors.

The articles in the thirteen volumes are illustrated with historical images from museums, print cabinets and archives, accompanied by captions, maps and charts.