Ok,  For those interested in the Re:Discovery software and who've been following my problem:
 
Thank you very much to whoever forwarded my email onto the Re:Discovery staff.  Someone from Re:Discovery called me and said he'd heard about my problem (which sort of freaked me out) and was able to work with me over the phone.  (We too also pay a hefty sum for the technical support). He's currently doing some research and is going to get back to me. 
 
First, as I expected, I didn't fully understand the registration process for collections items.  I was trying to do a couple of things that I didn't need to/shouldn't have been doing, such as creating an accession record for each specific object instead of one accession record for a group of items.  Same for the "loans in" issue.  Its why the system kept deleting my object number from the accession number when I would create an accession record.
 
Second, our institution operates three historic houses.  In order to better maintain and keep track of our collections for each site we have added the initials of each house into the catalog/accession number.  The number consists of the site initials first, the year of accession, the lot number, and the item number (for example, ATH003-1-1).  Our version of Re:Discovery uses the standard accession numbering system (1999.001).  As such, the system doesn't like the way I've been filling in numbers and tries to make our numbering system conform to its protocols.  This is why I've been having problems connecting accession records to catalog records and catalog records to loan records.
 
Now, that I understand what was going wrong, I like the program much better and would recommend it.  The support staff are very friendly and helpful as well, something I didn't anticipate having worked with support staff from other companies. However, if you buy the standard software, be prepared:  the field help boxes are empty (for user customization) and the training modules don't always cover what you have questions about. 
 
Thanks again to everybody for your help.
 
Meredith Dunham
Curatorial Assistant
 
Virginia Beach Historic Houses
3131 Virginia Beach Blvd.
Virginia Beach, VA 23452
Phone: 757-431-4000
Fax: 757-431-3733
Email: [log in to unmask]
 

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