[Koha] Koha questions on MARC setup

[Harvey Lee]

Hi,

I'm using Koha 2.0.0 and have a few of questions that I'm hoping someone can help me answer. The Koha I have set up has MARC on and is using simple acquisitions.

1. biblio-to-biblioitems relationship.
I have read about the biblio-biblioitems-items relationship that Koha uses. But from what I can see, there seems to be a strict one-to-one relationship between every biblio record created and every biblioitems record created. In other words, for every book I enter there is always one biblio record and one biblioitems record created. It seems there is no way to have 2 biblioitems associated to the same biblio. Looking at the code, it looks like with the configuration MARC=on and acquisition=simple, this will always be the case. Is this true, or am I missing something?

2. MARC links
I've seen in previous posts/documents on the topic of creating links from MARC subfields to Koha fields that, for the items table, all MARC subfields must be in the same tag. This raises some questions:
a- Can the other subfields of this tag that is not used for linking to an items field be used in other Koha fields (for instance, for a field in the biblioitems table)?
b- Is it legal to map the same subfield to 2 different Koha fields? For example, to map Dewey 082$a to both biblioitems.dewey and items.bulk?
c- Out of curiousity, what MARC tag are people using for the items fields? I've seen both 852 and 952 mentioned, but 952 seems very limited in the number of subfields that can be used given the number of items fields that are available t be mapped.
d- I think I saw it mentioned that subfields of the same tag cannot be spread across more than one of the 10 tab pages; they must reside on the same tab page. Is this true?

3. editing an items record for an existing entry
One field that I would like to have available to the librarian for editing is items.itemnotes. However, it seems that the items configuration page (additem.pl) is hidden behind the MARC configuration page (addbiblio.pl); one must select a biblio to edit and then save it before the items configuration page is shown. Is this the only way to reach this page?

4. creating a call number
I would like to have a field in the items record that indicates the call number that patrons can use to search for the book on the shelves. Excuse me if my terminology is not accurate; I'm using call number to mean the text on the spine label, e.g.:
   REF
   200.973
   BAR
I've seen several posts on this topic in the archives, but I have to ask this: how does one get the info from the 3 fields (item type, dewey, author) mapped to, for example, items.bulk? Can this be done programmatically within Koha, or is this intended to be a manual operation? If it is possible to be done programmatically, ideally this items.bulk field will show this data populated once the user saves a new biblio in addbiblio.pl and is is moved to the items configuration page (additem.pl). Has anyone gone through these contortions before?

5. Quick Search on ItemType
When I attempt to do a search on ItemType from the Quick Search menu, I find that the search will always fail with no results found unless I put a space in the Author or Title field as well. Anyone notice this?

Any help that anyone can shed on this will be MUCH appreciated.

Thanks,
Lee