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ITS Software Development and Distribution: Digital Bookplates


Overview

The Library’s digital bookplating program creates digital bookplates, manages the assignment of endowed and cash funds to materials acquired, places a link to a digital bookplate in catalog records, and displays the most recently acquired titles (and a link to a catalog search for all associated titles) on a dynamic web page devoted to each fund. Digital bookplates showcase donor generosity, encourage giving, and provide ongoing stewardship.

Team

Technical Details

The digital bookplate site is a MySQL/PHP application which uses data from a MySQL database and provides links to our BruKnow catalog. The database includes information about the donor, the bookplate, fund restrictions, reporting information, and income. A web interface allows staff to enter and edit data, upload bookplate images, and produce reports.

We associate books with endowed funds and their bookplates AFTER they are cataloged, making use of exported records and macros to add the bookplate fields. Item records have three new fields:

  1. field group “y” MARC 856: creates the link to the appropriate bookplate page
  2. field group “f” (fund): this field is indexed as a number search, and allows
    linking from the appropriate bookplate page
  3. field group “a” (accession information): a human-readable note that identifies the
    endowment and fiscal year

The website was updated by Digital Technologies in 2024, with a more accessible and responsible design.

This project includes endowed funds as well as cash gifts and gifts in kind. The intention is to replace all paper bookplating. Previously, up to five titles associated with the bookplate appeared on the bookplate page; currently for most funds and honorees we enter a link to BruKnow that will bring users to a list of all items with that Bookplate, e.g.  See items purchased with this fund in the library catalog.

Project Links

Reports and Presentations

  • Presentation at the Innovative Users Group meeting in April 2008.
  • The digital bookplate team received a Brown University Excellence Award for Innovation in 2007.