Thanks Luis - I do plan to allow multiple phones, I've created an image showing the two models I'm considering and I think it is easier to see graphically than decipher my text description, wish I had thought of that first! Granted, the tables have much more info than shown here, but it is sufficient to show the relationships.

This first model is the current structure:

What I don't like is that you can't look at a phone and tell whether it is for the person, location or something else - you have to join and see if it exists in one of the other tables. In addition, the phone table will get large since it has all of them in one spot, and we don't take advantage of having them together since they are not shared (e.g. using the same phone row for both a location and person). Of course, it assumes that all the objects that use phone have exactly the same attributes, which might be true, but might not as well.

This second is the one that I think sounds better:

Lynn - we do have a "type" as well - currently it's hung off the join table since the valid types for locations are different than that for persons,that would change with the new model. Here I show three different entities (person, location, and "another entity"), and this same pattern would apply for addresses, emails, etc.

Thanks,

Chad

EDITED: Added inline references to the images now that I know where they were uploaded to...