The Afghan Serials Collection is an essential collection of partisan serials from the Wahdat Library, the most comprehensive private collection of rare newspapers and journals from Afghanistan. This collection is a major contribution to the preservation of the history of the region and is comprised of the careful selection of more than 2,500 individual issues of 46 newspapers and journals published in Persian, Pushto, Arabic, Urdu, and English. The collection covers the use of the press by many groups that sought to shape Afghanistan’s social and intellectual landscape including the Communist People’s Democratic Party (PDPA); exiled loyalists to the deposed Afghan monarchy; independent humanitarians and intellectuals seeking to better their country; anti-Soviet mujaheddin groups from a range of political movements; the Taliban; and minority political parties that have emerged following the post-2001 transition towards democracy.

CrossAsia is an interdisciplinary portal and central access point for online information on East and Southeast Asian studies. The portal provides an integrated search of distributed databases (free and subject to licence), access to selected digital collections and an online guide of electronic resources related to East and Southeast Asian studies (OGEA). Access for Max Planck researchers is subject to a local agreement free of charge.

The Miras Maktoob collection of Persian e-books consists of 249 volumes (189 works) originally published by the Written Heritage Research Institute (Miras Maktoob), a non-governmental organization in Tehran. These e-books contain both Persian and Arabic works on Islamic history and culture in the broadest sense.