public display of item information

item type: see "random Koha bits" posting. Also, one exciting (have I been staring at this too long?!) breakthrough: I found information about the "Link to Field." In someone's comment for help they mentioned: "automatically copy [tag] to your new tag using the "Link to Field" feature. I used this field in the 952c and had it fill with the 942c. Then, when I created a new item by receiving, it both sorts by the item type in the bib record in 942c and shows correctly in the "item type" column. No information shows within the item record, but I think that it is pulling the information correctly! (unfortunately, I don't think these bibliographic framework changes update existing item records--just new ones. I think this is why I didn't think this worked previously--I was looking at existing item records)

branch location: It seems that this information is linked to the "holding branch" information in the items tab, unfortunately, the branch information added when receiving an order auto-fills to the "home branch" field. I don't know if this is a parameter that can be changed. Of course these fields are pulling information because of their mapping to the Koha fields: 952b/homebranch=items.homebranch and 952d/holdingbranch=items.holdgingbranch. I did try reversing the linking of the above Koha fields, but this of course just reversed my problem instead of fixing it.

I don't think any other combinations are possible (such as not using items.holdingbranch or using one of them twice because they all must be used and used only once). I also tried using the "link to field" to have the holdingbranch (what displays) just fill with information from the homebranch (what comes from the order info), but it didn't seem to work when I created a new item by receiving. I don't see any solution other than manually filling this information as each new item is created.

The search by branch option uses the information in the homebranch to sort (just like the auto-filled info from the order), but the display shows the information in the holding branch. If these two fields don't match, then a search by a particular branch may not work/make sense--why have both of these fields?! One thing that makes sense is that it shows more than one branch location when there is more than one item (associated with more than one branch).

Also, non-reservable items (reference/microform) have a (1) in addition to the branch abbreviation in the branch location column. I'm not sure what purpose this has, other than it is tied to being a "Not Reservable" item.

items: this is a running tally of how many item records are associated with a bibliographic record. It seems to me that since most of the existing items were not "ordered" & "received" that there is no item associated and therefore no information shows or it displays "on order." (ditto for why no location information, either)