Take a journey through time when you visit these five Sicilian attractions. Medievalists and Italian culture enthusiasts will enjoy an abundance of architectural masterpieces that serve as standing icons of Sicily’s Norman past. The Norman period (c. 1061 – 1194) encompasses a culturally rich point in Sicily’s history during which the island experienced transformative sociopolitical changes. Despite the significant amount of time that has passed since the Norman period, its influence remains relevant to the twenty-first-century traveler and scholar.

When I heard about the opportunity to be part of The Norman Sicily Project, I was immediately interested in learning more. After reading the job description, I was even more eager to apply and I was beyond thrilled when I was offered a position on the team. Being a history major, with a particular interest in medieval Italian history, I was captivated by the pictures of the ornate details of the monasteries and churches. Prior to beginning my work on the project, I had some knowledge of what historical research entails. However, participating in this project has taught me more than I had ever expected. Not only have I been able to utilize and improve my research skills, I have also learned what it means to be part of a scholarly research team. Along with three other undergrads at Montclair State University, I have been contributing to the project. Initially, my first tasks were to catalogue images of the extraordinary Norman medieval monasteries found across Sicily, which included identifying the contents of each photograph, date visited, and more. Before beginning, the other students and I underwent a weekend of training so that we understood the complexities of working with and cataloging the historical data that we were about to encounter. The highlight of this stage in the project, for me, was to view photographs of the variety of monasteries found throughout different regions of Sicily and the ability to see the magnitude and cultural richness of the sites and their remains.

Throughout my time working with The Norman Sicily Project, I’ve had the opportunity to learn about so many different areas of study that I never would have experienced otherwise. Recently, I’ve been working on confirming the existence of the churches during the Norman period. In these past few weeks, I’ve gotten a glimpse at how historians use sources for their research. I had no idea how hard this was until I had to do it myself. It is extremely difficult to find the information that this site contains, since it all comes from different sources, which are often hard to track down or in another language.

You might have noticed that The Norman Sicily Project’s website has recently undergone a lot of changes. Over the past few months, we’ve been working on creating a new interface for the site. Here’s a little behind the scenes of how we did everything.

First Things First

The first thing you should have when redesigning a website is a goal. What do you want from the new site? What can be improved upon from the current site? With The Norman Sicily Project, we wanted better accessibility and a better interface. These improvements would bring activity to the site and educate people about Sicily’s Norman past, which is the main goal of the project. Here’s some of the feedback we used to make changes to the site:

In my journey with The Norman Sicily Project, the nature of my work has grown alongside the project’s progression. In this evolution, I have been given a number of invaluable opportunities to learn new skills and refine pre-existing ones. The process of cataloging and assigning metadata to images has improved my organizational abilities and understanding of file structures. This facet of the job has been incredibly beneficial to my aspirations of working in the post-production aspect of filmmaking- a department where organization is not only key, but, has the force of scripture. My capacity to concisely describe images has also proven to be an asset of the same function. With the completion of the image portion of the project, I have more recently been assigned to a heavily research-oriented task.

Sustainability, accessibility, and storytelling are at the heart of The Norman Sicily Project. Earlier this year Professor of History Dawn Hayes received a prestigious grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program for her project, “Documenting the Past, Triaging the Present and Assessing the Future: A Prototype for Sicily’s Norman Heritage, ca. 1061-1194.” When I received an email from Dr. Hayes congratulating me on receiving a position as a Media and Metadata Assistant to work on the project, I was ecstatic. As an aspiring media professional strongly connected to my Sicilian roots, pursuing this opportunity has been such a meaningful experience for me. I have a foundational knowledge of Sicilian history and culture because my grandparents from both sides of my family immigrated to America from the island. Coming into the project, I reflected on my own experiences visiting some of the sites that have been a part of my work. The aim of The Norman Sicily Project is to document the cultural heritage of Sicily during the Norman period (c. 1061-1194) to make at-risk monuments accessible to scholars via the internet. Dr. Hayes and her husband, Joe Hayes, the project’s chief technical architect, have gone above and beyond to achieve these goals. What leverages the project as distinctive is its emphasis on sustainability and its embrace of received knowledge from native Sicilians. Their impact is credited on the project’s site. “An enormous debt of gratitude is owed to the countless Sicilians who, in numerous ways, have helped make this project possible. We hope that this effort is a small repayment for their unfailing kindness and generosity,” writes Dr. Hayes.