Abstract
This paper presents the design of e-LIS (Electronic Bilingual Dictionary Italian Sign Language (LIS) - Italian), an ongoing research project at the European Academy of Bolzano started in 2004. It is the first attempt to build a sign-language reference dictionary that contains definitions and examples in the sign language itself and which offers a search engine that guides the user in the process of reconstructing and retrieving the sign he is looking for. Thus, not only can users go from Italian to LIS, but also from LIS to Italian.