Well I had been told that Class::DBI won't do Joins. I was hoping that whatever system I end up using will be able to have a form that will allow the creation, deletion and modification of records from more than one table at once which presumably require table relationships and joins.

For instance, if I delete a book in my book table, I will also want it to delete any entries corresponding to that book in my bookowners table.

Is that logical or am I being overly pessimistic about the capabilities of Class::DBI?

Class::DBI can do this - with a has_many relationship.