I went ahead and made changes based on your suggestions. Here is what I now have.

sub NewTable
{
   $table = $_[0];
   $column = $_[1];
   $indexname = $_[2];

   $sqltext =  "CREATE TABLE $table (
        id INTEGER  PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
        $column VARCHAR)";
   $dbh->do($sqltext);
   $insertrow = $dbh->prepare ("INSERT into $table ($column) values(?)
+");
   $insertrow->execute("Dummy");
   $sqltext = "CREATE INDEX $indexname ON $table ($column)";
   $dbh->do ($sqltext);
   $id = $dbh->last_insert_id(undef, undef, undef, undef);
}
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Box, bookleafplate and other tables not seen need to be separat tables for normalization purposes, for example, a (book in this case) may have come from a box labeled 'Skowhegan Me No 345' and may or may not have a bookleafplate ( fronts piece image ). I have one table which contains all of the unique information, and then id's to tables where duplication may occur, thus the need for the last_insert_id call.
I spent many years using Sybase, Oracle and other relational databases, but not within perl until now. I like SQLite because all I have to worry about is one file which makes for easy (physical) portability.

I did use perl for a while shortly after it emerged in the 80's while working on a CAD/CAM software project, but only now have become serious about it.
Ted Stefanik (while at MIT) reviewed the first PERL book for Larry Wall & Tim O'Reilly (who's book publishing company was located at Fresh Pond in Cambridge Ma. at that time)
I worked with him, and it is because of him that I started using perl. Ted has contributed a lot to perl, some of his early work is still available on the web see: http://stuff.mit.edu:8001/afs/net/dev/dev/ project/tcl/tcl-6.7/perl-tcl-debug"
Again, thanks a lot for your very useful advise.
Largins