[Koha] Creative re-purposing of major fields

[hansbkk at gmail.com]

2011/2/15 Ian Walls <ian.walls at bywatersolutions.com>:
>> > See a patch I submitted a year ago:
>> Also see that there are issues with the patch that require additional
>> work.
> With a little modification, I've gotten the original patch to apply, and it
> works for searching on the OPAC.  I think the next steps to get this

Well, I'm coming from a plain ol' user's POV, so if it's not in stable
it's not available 8-)

NBD anyway, just because it's not available as a search factor, the
fact that it displays in the OPAC, means I'd like to use it to display
meaningful information about the item.

So how about it guys, could someone try to answer my question?

Here's a concrete example - suppose I've got a huge "Animation"
collection, large "Disney" and "Directors" collections, and a smaller
"Barbie" one.

Could these items be located at multiple library branches?

Say I've got shelving locations called "Princesses" and "Fairies" and
"Action". Can these span across Collections, so that items from both
"Directors" and "Animation" could be in the "Action" shelving
location. Or do the "Disney Princesses" need to be a separate shelving
location from the "Barbie Princesses"?

I realize this is a whimsical illustration, and am not asking about
the logic of this from a librarian's POV - strictly on the
IT-technical question of whether the Koha UI or DB enforce a
"containing hierarchy" relationship between these fields.

While I'm at it, I'd like confirmation that the call number sequence
is also completely separate from all of the above (I think
"orthogonality" is a word?) and that this is the order used for the
OPAC's "browse the shelf" functionality?