Alison Procter Family History Centre
(click to open map)
The Alison Procter Centre (APFHC) is located in the Paraparaumu Public Library, Rimu Road, Paraparaumu and is open 7 days a week during Library hours.
Our computers, books, and microfiche collection are in the North West Corner of the ground floor.
Members may show their current membership card (pink for 2022/23) at the main library Welcome Desk to obtain the key to access our cupboards, and obtain the keyboards for the computers.
The key to the resource collection will be issued and must be signed for.
On completing their session, members are requested to lock up the storage cupboards, return the key to the Information Desk to sign out.
The research facility includes a computer suite for Internet access to a number of subscription websites and use of our CD-ROM collection via our Branch resource menu. There are also microfiche readers and an extensive fiche collection for information not on-line.
A number of books are available for borrowing by members via the library by showing your membership card .
Every Wednesday morning from 10 am to 12 noon (except over the late December to early January break), volunteers are on hand to assist both members and the general public with their research, and provide guidance on using the resources.
Additional sessions for members only are held during the year at alternative times to cater for those who are unable to attend on Wednesday mornings.
Instructions for the APFHC program interface may be downloaded from the members only section.
FYI the computer passwords were changed today.
The new one is, of course, in the red book in drawer 5.
The shift and the cull of open shelf contents
I’m sure today’s nasty weather is keeping you from the APFHC, but if you were also staying away because of our scheduled shift, we were advised late yesterday that the shift has been shifted.
It is now scheduled for this coming Monday (11th), so do not expect computers to be working, or where they used to be.
The new location is in the north west corner of the ground floor.
As part of this shift we are reviewing both our open shelves (and the books) as space will be restricted downstairs.
First up for a cull are the open shelves.
These do not have to shift immediately, only the computers and fiche reader(s) and cabinet are moving on Monday
We have scheduled three sessions where members may come and select from those items deemed to no longer be of sufficient relevance to take up valuable space downstairs.
This does not mean that the items are no longer useful to someone.
In general these include items that are now online, and anything pre 2011 such as magazines and assorted Family History Society magazines.
All will have articles in them that are still highly relevant and interesting, we do after all specialise in history, but we have to draw a line somewhere.
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A committee member will be on hand at the following times to show you which items are available free to a good home.
Wednesday 13th 1-2pm
Thurs 14th 10 – 11am
Saturday 16th 11am to 12 noon
So, come along at any of the above times and see what you can adopt.
Those items not re-homed are to be binned.
A similar session will be held for the books, later.
Don’t be alarmed if one of our PCs is missing over the next week.
We are upgrading our two oldest computers from XP to Win7 and inching towards our goal of consistent software on all the computers.
Computers and school holidays.
Unfortunately our computers at the APFHC are being plagued by what we can only assume are bored school children on holiday.
The new program had been completely removed from one computer, another had had its case opened, and we often find network cables have been disconnected.
Correcting all of this is delaying efforts to make the new program fully functional with regard to accessing our cds.
In an effort to prevent further tampering the keyboards have currently been disconnected and locked in the cupboard.
A note has been left by the computers to that effect.
To use the computers, you will need to sign for the key, unlock the cupboard and reconnect a keyboard.
Please return the keyboard to the cupboard when you have finished your research.
We will obviously be reviewing this to see what alternatives may be available to keep our computers freely available to members but tamper proof from light fingers
On a more positive note, the new program does seem to have overcome the continual need to sign back in to FindMyPast.
Please take a memory stick if you wish to print your finds as we are currently experiencing printing problems again. The resolution is out of our control, but is hand. Your patience is appreciated.
PC 5 was off the air for a while as someone has been fiddling and disconnected the network cable. Fixed.
Sorry folks but we continue to have teething problems with printing. This can currently be overcome by bringing your own memory stick and outputting your file/screenshots of interest to that.
Rest assured we are trying to resolve the issue(s) and apologize for the inconvenience.
Happy to advise that the server is back up and running, and therefore printing is now available again.
Please note that the default layout is Portrait, so anyone wanting to print a census record should remember to change the layout to landscape before printing for best results.
The lack of printing issue has been diagnosed. Our brand new server, which drives all the printing, needs the hard drive replaced – which is in hand (under warranty). Until the replacement drive has been installed and the server back up and running, no printing will be possible.
As a workaround, remember to bring a USB stick to get your printouts electronically.
All computers should however still work in standalone mode, if they haven’t been unplugged!.
APFHC status update
We continue to have problems with members of the public unplugging cables for computer 5, which means that it cannot connect to the internet.
We are also aware that there appears to be a spooling problem with the printer.
Both issues are being worked on and we apologise for any inconvenience.
The computers are now all up and running, unless someone has unplugged either the power or the internet cable (again).
Some difficulty has been reported with printing census data from ancestry.
Sue advises that you may get better results by using the browser page printing options rather than the print button from within ancestry.
This will be investigated and the instructions updated.
Our computer upgrade is planned for Friday 24th August, 3pm, making our computers unavailable until the upgrade is complete.
We do not expect the upgrade to spill over into the weekend, but please bear with us if it does.