Craft Meets Code: Digital Pathways for Fine Press Collections

Fine press books embody a unique blend of artistry and craftsmanship, yet their rich material and bibliographic details often remain locked in specialized catalogs or physical archives. This project explores how integrating fine press information into Wikidata—a global, linked open data platform—can preserve and amplify the cultural significance of these works in a digital context. Using the BYU Library’s fine press holdings, we’re modeling presses, printers, and editions within Wikidata’s semantic framework, creating opportunities for discovery, visualization, and computational analysis that respect the material heritage of the book arts. The presentation will highlight: • Utilizing library holdings to compile a list of presses • Data cleaning and reconciliation with Wikidata using OpenRefine • Challenges and strategies for modeling fine press entities and their material characteristics • Examples of initial visualizations generated from the data entered to date • Opportunities for collaboration and future research This initiative demonstrates how digital humanities can safeguard the materiality of fine press while enabling new research pathways through open, interoperable data.