Under the direction of Poul Andersen, Associate Professor of Chinese Religions at the University of Hawaii, a team of scholars and students are currently developing the DIP database. While the primary purpose of the project is to allow for scholarly interaction and research on Daoist images, the results of this research will eventually be open to the public in the form of an electronic encyclopedia of Daoism available over the internet.

Religious Daoism and Its Iconography
Among the world's major religions Daoism is without question the least fully explored by scholars, and the least clearly understood by people in general. Within the field of comparative religion it is still quite common to find textbooks that in effect avoid taking Daoism as a religion into account, and that describe the universally shared phenomena of religion and ethics with reference to all the major world religions—except for Daoism. While it represents one of the richest religious traditions of the world, Daoism as a religion is still very much a terra incognita to the world outside the inner circles of its priesthood, and even some of the most basic questions concerning its history and its practices, not to mention the central elements of its pantheon, still wait to be answered. The goal of DIP is to devise the means that will lead to finding the answers to some of the most important of these questions. Through compiling and analyzing visual representations of the deities of the Daoist pantheon, the project aims to reveal the iconic language of Daoist images, thereby making it possible to understand the messages conveyed by this form of religious art.