This week, just about all of the known Elgin Marbles have been submitted into a spreadsheet as preparation for Itinera. However, we're having a couple problems with actually inputting the Marbles, and there are some issues with organizing other museums that are not the British Museum:
1) We need to get permission from the British Museum to use their cataloged photographs of the Elgin Marbles. This museum has the largest portion of the Elgin collection, and they also have the most accurate and thorough metadata for our purposes with Itinera. Until then, we'll be finding images on the internet that we can use without having to ask for permission.
2) We're still figuring out how we are exactly going to input the Marbles into Itinera. We need to figure out how we're going to organize the metopes, the friezes and any other larger portions of the Marbles within the database. Some portions of the Marbles, like the west pediment figures, are individual, so those will be easier to input into Itinera. But the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum have different ways of categorizing the Marbles, so it will be more difficult to submit them both into Itinera since they use different units to divide up the Marbles. There's more information about the Marbles at the British Museum or the Louvre than at the Acropolis Museum or any of the other museums that have Marble fragments, so organizing the Marbles at these other museums presents more of a challenge.
Starting after spring break (3/18), I'll begin submitting information from my spreadsheet into Itinera. I'll start with the people whom I've researched (Lord Elgin, Mary Nisbet, etc.) and work my way through some of the individual figures and fragments from the west pediment. At the very least, there will be lots of traveling going on around the Marbles, at least through Turkey, England and a little bit of Russia. Let's hope I'm better at programming the second time around.