Background

There are serious drawbacks to using print bookplates in libraries, especially for large academic institutions. Print bookplates require piece-in-hand access for donors to view the bookplates honoring their gifts. At the Smathers Libraries, books are housed in various branch locations across campuses, so it is very difficult for donors to find the books acquired through their donations. The libraries also had to purchase or generate print bookplates, which became increasingly expensive to produce, and the process of affixing the plates created a specialized monograph workflow that was labor-intensive.

To offset the problems associated with print bookplates, a team of technical services librarians launched a project in 2008 to create and display virtual bookplates for gifts and endowments from imbedded links in the library’s OPAC (see Figure 1). Three goals of the project were identified: boost the speed and efficiency of “attaching” bookplates, improve the access and visibility of the bookplates, and offer the Smathers Libraries’ Development Office an attractive online forum for future development.

Peer practices

The value of donor relations has been noted in an article by Miguel Juarez, who outlined the growing importance of fundraising in academic libraries. Citing the personal and corporate characteristics inherent in successful fundraising efforts, Juarez commented that donor recognition is a critical component.1 Print bookplates have long been a standard practice in academic and college libraries to acknowledge gifts and according to Gail Gunter, bookplates originally served the purpose of showing private ownership or provenance. Libraries adopted bookplates to register publicly in-kind gifts and endowment purchases, often creating versions that represent unique attributes of donors and their collections.2

Personalizing the connection between donors and libraries is a crucial step to development, but bookplates can be also used to honor individuals. At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, a key part of a special event to honor newly promoted and tenured faculty includes bookplating works by the honorees.3 In addition to offering creative bookplate renditions to honor individuals, libraries are developing techniques to expand the recognition of the traditional print bookplate. For example, the handling of gifts in-kind at the University of Saskatchewan includes both physically attaching a bookplate to each piece and adding a local series note in the bibliographic record that displays in the OPAC.4

Library Web sites offer a variety of procedures dealing with bookplates, particularly online practices. Procedures used by catalogers to add donor text to bibliographic records are available at the University of Colorado5 and the University of Maine.6 The University of Pennsylvania has expanded on this concept by creating a link in the online catalog for every title purchased with an endowment that routes to a Web page with details on the donor and fund used to purchase the item.7

At the University of Michigan-Dearborn, donor names in the catalog are linked to a bookplate page, and a 710 field is used to bring together all donations for a particular year, i.e., “Library donation, 2009.”8

Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center Medical Library recognizes e-book donors on the Web,9 while Brown University’s use of virtual bookplates involves linking from the catalog record to a bookplate display generated from a database containing detailed information about the donor as well as the endowment, cash gift, or in-kind gift.10

In a presentation at the 2008 Innovative Users Group Conference, Brown University librarians cited a 63 percent increase in new gifts to the library endowment in the year following the introduction of their digital bookplate program. The librarians noted many positive comments from development staff and the donors.11 These findings are indications that more robust donor recognition efforts can have a significant impact on library fundraising.

Bookplate survey

To better determine how academic libraries are using bookplates to acknowledge gifts and endowments, a short, eight-question survey was created in Survey Monkey and was sent out August 2009 to three electronic lists: ACQNET, AUTOCAT, and LIBDEV.12 The survey was designed to solicit input from respondents on bookplate policies and procedures being used in libraries, whether those bookplates were print or virtual. We received 164 responses from our survey, which in itself shows the degree of interest in this subject. From the respondent libraries, almost all (95%) currently use print bookplates, while few (16%) make use of the virtual format.

Follow-up questions focused on the technical aspects for the libraries using virtual bookplates. From the responses we learned that most libraries using the virtual plates were adding text to the catalog records to honor the donors (83%), indexing the text and making it searchable (70%), and adding a link to a bookplate image from the online catalog record (38%).

The most telling response of all was the number of respondents (88%) expressing interest in pursuing a virtual bookplate program for their libraries. Among the comments were many enthusiastic replies such as, “Sounds like a great idea”; “I think this idea merits pursuit”; and “I would be very interested in how you do this.”

Clearly many libraries are either seriously contemplating the use of virtual bookplates, or are already taking steps to implement virtual plates into their operations.

Technical workflow

Steps for creating the virtual bookplates can be traced back to the method used to display holdings notes in the online catalog to recognize gifts and endowments. Over the past two years, the processes for creating virtual bookplates were revised until standardized procedures were developed and posted on the cataloging Web site.13 Catalogers now employ a macro to add a donor name to the bibliographic record in a MARC 796 field with a locally defined second indicator–3.

The second indicator serves as a unique identifier, which FCLA targets to construct a donor facet. The facet is not displayed to the public, rather it allows items with the designated MARC coding to be found via a search box directed at the donated or endowed material, an advantage when donors want a quick and easy way to keyword search donations. The macro also assists the cataloger in adding a link to the holdings record in a MARC 856 field (see Figure 2). The 856 field includes a gift note (e.g., Gift in memory of) and connects to a dynamically generated online bookplate by way of an HTML file, which calls a JavaScript file. The HTML file is empty except for the reference to the JavaScript file. The JavaScript constructs the actual page, bringing in the image and inserting text from the URL in the 856 field. This method allows the library to use the same two files (HTML, JavaScript) to render images for bookplates that display as full-color JPG images complete with donor information (see Figure 3).

Custom services have been created within the ILS staff GUI that supplement a workflow enabling staff to identify records that have been purchased with endowment funds. The first service generates a file of system numbers by fund code to use as input for an Aleph global change service that inserts a 797 field with the name of the endowment into the bibliographic record. The second service compiles the associated holding system numbers so that a static link to the endowment’s bookplate can be added to the holdings record using another global change. This workflow is run on a quarterly basis to identify new purchases made on active endowment funds.

Conclusion

By summer 2009, the virtual bookplates project was considered a success at the Smathers Libraries. The use of virtual bookplates has received support from library administration, library selectors, and the development staff. Donors can now easily see the books acquired through their generosity by inputting the name of a donor or endowment into a basic search box found on the Development Office’s front Web page (see Figure 4). Such a search retrieves a list of donated titles that contain links to the virtual bookplate, often designed specifically for that endowment (see Figure 5). This type of donor recognition enhances the cultivating process as it communicates to donors that their endowments are valued and visible to library users. Virtual bookplates also present better recognition for material gifts. Libraries can use virtual bookplates to specifically spell out a donor’s name or the person a gift may be honoring, and a quick search now finds the exact materials added to library collections.

The opportunity to use virtual bookplates is related in a story told by the Chief Development Officer at the Smathers Libraries Samuel Huang. Huang was in the home of a potential donor urging him to donate to a funding program (Books of Honor) using virtual bookplates. Opening his laptop and searching by name, Huang retrieved a set of books purchased through a recent donation. The donor was so impressed by the virtual bookplates displayed and the ease of finding them, he immediately offered a $2,000 cash donation.14

The prospects that online bookplates impart for library development are obvious and invigorating, and the results of the survey revealed that many librarians and development officers are very attracted to the development opportunities afforded through virtual bookplates. We recommend that interested libraries take advantage of the online technology now available to create a virtual bookplate program tailored for its own specific workflow and development goals.