More about Central Library parking

I saw an interesting article in the Saturday Dec. 7 San Diego Union about the underground parking.

The parking management company, ABM Management, is running the parking concession for cost with all of the profit going to the library! ABM is running the parking for 11.5% of the revenue with 88.5% going to the library. This could mean as much as $730,000 income for the library's budget.It still hurts the patron's wallet but at least we know that the money is not just going directly into the city coffers.

The first hour of parking is free with library validation. The parking validation is available on the library first floor. After the first hour the rate is $1.25 per each 20 minutes or part thereof up to a maximum of $21 per day.

Parking at the San Diego Central Library

Since the underground library parking is no longer free you need to know about the surface parking.

There are two surface lots across Park Blvd from the library that are reasonably priced. The closest lot is immediately across Park at the 11th St. stoplight. This lot is $5 all day and uses a dashboard ticket to show you have paid.. You enter the lot from Park Blvd. The ticket vending machine is right inside the lot and takes cash or credit cards. It does not give change.

There is a $3 per day parking lot across the trolley tracks from the above mentioned lot. The ticket vending machine is in the extreme southwest corner of the lot. This is the corner that is closest to the 12th and Imperial Transit Station. I'd recommend entering this lot from Imperial Ave westbound so you can drive right to the ticket vending machine. Get your parking stub and drive through the lot be close to the library. There is a shrubbery island that divides the parking lot and it looks like it divides the lot to prevent full access to the library part of the lot. However there are two fire lanes through the shrubbery that you can drive through. You have to look for them but they are accessible.

There are no in and out privileges on either lot. Both lots cost $15 to $20 on baseball game days.

There is a multi-story parking structure at the northwest corner of the library but I haven't priced it yet.

Bus and trolley are good choices too. All three trolley lines stop at the 12th and Imperial Transit Station. The transit station is only a long block from the library.

Buses 11, 901 and 929 stop at the library.

Genealogy Docents at San Diego Central Library

The San Diego Genealogical Society now has "Genealogy Docents" at the San Diego Central Library!

The new Central Library has an entire floor devoted to the California Collection, the Wangenheim Rare Book Collection, and Genealogy. Our society has merged our holdings with the Public Library genealogy collection. The merging of these two collections means that San Diego has one of the largest book and periodical collections in Southern California.

The San Diego Genealogical Society is providing Genealogy Docents to assist the public in finding the appropriate research material and provide some limited guidance in doing genealogical research.

A schedule of docent availability is accessible through a link at the left side of this page.

Midwest Family History Expo

I am in Kearney, Nebraska attending the Midwest Family History Expo. This is a two day event at the convention center in Kearney. The center is associated with the Holiday Inn Motel in Kearney. It is a very nice place with plenty of space for the presentations.

They have 4 session each day with your choice of 1 of 6 lectures per session. There is a nice variety of subjects to choose from. There are several vendors for local  businesses and Family Roots Publishing with a great selection of books.

FamilySearch.org is here and is a supporter of the expo. There is a blogger lounge for the bloggers who are in attendance.

Family History Expos is the overall organizer.

This is the first time the Midwest Family History Expo has been held in Kearney. Hopefully the event will return and become a major event.

Interactive gravestones link to online tales of life.

Summing up the life of a dearly departed relative with just a terse description etched in stone may become a thing of the past with the introduction of interactive codes on gravestones.

One funeral company in the southern English town of Poole is offering to add quick response (QR) codes to headstones which will link smartphones to online memorials illustrated with pictures, videos and contributions from family and friends.

Chester Pearce funeral directors said QR barcodes enable visitors to learn a lot more about the person buried beneath gravestones than the age, dates of birth and death and the odd biblical passage or literary quote usually written on them.

"It's about keeping people's memories alive in different ways," managing director Stephen Nimmo told Reuters.

"When you lose somebody, whether it be suddenly or ongoing, you can really struggle with things.

Talking about them is very important, keeping their memory going is very important and this is just an add-on to that."

QR codes, a barcode that can be scanned with smartphones or QR scanners, allow users to pull up information on the internet and are frequently used in advertising and marketing campaigns.

"It's a new technology, it's something that there will be people who like it, there will be people who don't and that's the same in everything that we do," Nimmo said.

He said he has seen demand growing for QR codes as they catch the imagination of the public.

Chester Pearce charge about 300 pounds ($477) to create a code that can also be placed on gravestones, benches, trees or plaques and is linked to a page on their QR Memories website.

Gill Tuttiet, 53, was one of the first customers in Poole to use the technology for her late husband Timothy.

"Tim was quite outward-going and game for anything. I think this is the way forward and Tim would have wanted that, and it's making a process that's hard possibly easier," Tuttiet said.

The website linked to the code shows a profile of the departed, pictures, videos and tributes from family and friends.

Close friends and family given a password are also able to add personal messages of their own.

"We've all got a story to tell," Nimmo said.

(Reporting by Li-mei Hoang, editing by Paul Casciato)

THINGS TO KNOW

If you missed the general meeting you missed a lot of good information. It should be uploaded soon to the regular site. Randy Seaver had given two very informative lectures. In one lecture he discussed the trials and tribulations of tracking down his wife’s family in England, Australia and the US. The other lecture was information on Cloud Computing and innovative websites, devices and apps available on the internet. One not to miss is http://blog.billiongraves.com/ All you have to do it take the picture and the phone will put the GPS location on for you and upload it to the web. It is one of the easiest apps. The app is free, and there is the option to make a purchase in the app to be able to search for a record, but you can buy the convenience of searching on mobile if you desire. They have lots of fun things that they do like organizing groups of people to go to the cemeteries and take picture.

THINGS TO KNOW

THINGS TO KNOW http://www.idaillinois.org This is a site for Illinois Digital Archives. Audio is hard to hear but information is great. Some of the information you can find here…telephone books for some years in the 1930’s…some biographies of famous people from Illinois…newspapers. Have fun…wonderful website. Don’t forget to search for digital records for your home state!!!