The goal of the initial phase of the development of the DIP database is to provide scholars with access to the project's growing collections of Daoist images along with a variety of database tools for searching and retrieving information about these images. Our work to date has focused on accurately identifying the deities depicted in Daoist images from a variety of different genres (ritual scrolls, book illustrations, sketchbooks). The database now contains close to 100 names of deities, deity groups, and departments (e.g., Courts of Hell) depicted in representations of the Daoist pantheon. These names, and their variants found in Daoist texts, are searchable in Chinese characters, pinyin, and English translation. Deity names are further categorized according to the roles of the deities in Daoist ritual (e.g., masters, guardians, underworld functionaries), which play an important part in interpreting the meaning, use, and placement of their representations in ritual space.

With over 200 images included in the database, it has become possible to compare and contrast different representations of the same deity. In addition, ways of identifying the iconographic features of the deities in these images and referencing their citations in Daoist texts are currently being developed. This analysis of iconographic features has shown to be a powerful tool, both for assessing the characteristics of individual deities and for identifying hitherto unknown figures.