Thanks for your help. Somehow I never noticed the titleField. We have it set to auto for all our lists, and that's why I'm getting the strange (to me) behavior with the default column being displayed. As described in the help, AUTO makes the display field be the first String field. So, if the list has a string key, by default the key is also the display field. If the list's key is an integer, then the first string field is the one displayed.