* To Move Address into Place Record - or Not

[davidm_uk]

I have a growing number of photos of "places" (house, street, church, cemetery, factory etc) which are relevant to more than one person, sometimes many people, and at different times in their lives. At the moment I have most of those "places" are named in the Address record, with their village, town, county etc in the Place record.

Of course, at the moment, FH doesn't allow multimedia records to be attached to Addresses, only to Places. I know that some people have moved all their addresses into the Place record to overcome this.

I'm thinking about doing this, and extending my Place records from 4 fields to 6 or 7. What are the potential downsides of doing it? One thing that springs to mind is mapping, particularly where (for example) St. Jame's might be a church and/or a parish/district.

[jimlad68]

The ever present question, the best way to deal with places. Some of the old links discuss it in depth, and I'm sure there are many more:

Best format of PLACe and ADDRess for Map Geocoding (11937)
adding Lat/Long, Standardised places +their Notes to Reports (12062)[/quote]
List names by place (12737)

For my method and reasoning to use only PLACes (inspired greatly by geocoding) see this topic (entry by jimlad68 » 28 Mar 2015 17:43)
Rearrange Address and Place Parts Plugin (12330)

[tatewise]

Putting the Address data into the Place field won't help much with FH Mapping, because its geocoder mostly only understands town/county/country place names rather than buildings/streets. If you want to map Addresses then use the Map Life Facts Plugin, but there are various pros and cons with different options. See glossary:places|> Places and Addresses and its Forum Posts on Places and Addresses for further points to ponder.

I suggest you use Sources with Photo Media attached, and cite them from the Facts with the associated Address. That way the Source record can fill in all sorts of details about that particular Address and Photo. The Repository can hold refined details about the Address, etc.

See how_to:create_locations_database_details|> Create a Locations Database of Place & Address Details for full details of this technique. Note that the use of Repository records is not essential.

An alternative is to link the Photo Media directly to each Fact with the associated Address.