Daily Blog #12: Digitization of the Puffenberger Religious Artifacts Collection

We started off the day with a visit from the donor of the collection, Dr. William Puffenberger! Dr. Puffenberger dropped by this morning during our daily goals discussion. We showed him the Omeka and all of the progress that we have made so far. He was very impressed with what had accomplished in just under three weeks. He was also very grateful that his collection was being used and cataloged, making his collection available for anyone around the world. Being able to speak with Dr. Puffenberger and seeing his excitement about the project, has made all of the work I have done so far, worth it. Dr. Puffenberger plans on coming back sometime in the next week or so to get started on the video interviews that we plan on including on our site.

After lunch, Amal and I really made progress towards our weekly goals. With my weekly goal to catalog 25 artifacts this week, I was able to take photos of eight artifacts. These artifacts included The Khanda or Sikh Symbol, Karatalas (Bronze Hand Cymbals), Bronze Shiva Nataraja (Dancing Shiva), Soapstone Shiva Lingam, Madonna at Prayer, Greek Orthodox Icon of Christ, Protestant Cross, and Glass Virgin Mary. I also created 360-degree videos for each artifact and tagged each photo on Omeka. I recorded and measured the dimensions of each of the artifacts also. With a lot of excitement and goals to be met, today has been very productive!

• Hannah Ciocco

-Dr. Newton, Amal, and Dr. Puffenberger discussing the future of the Omeka site. (Picture: Hannah Ciocco)