Outcomes & End Users

Possible User Groups Identified for Meath Field Names Survey

Gathering the field name information was a major undertaking in terms of logistics. The work involved in collating, studying and extracting information from the raw data was also a major undertaking and has involved a great deal of time, study and work. This will continue with groups, students and all interested parties for many years to come. As all the strands of work progressed the Steering Group began to consider who the end users of the project would be, and how they might use the information that had been gathered and compiled so far. This is a list of some of the end user groups identified: 

• The people who have contributed information about their fields
• The voluntary surveyors who completed the survey in local townlands
• Local Historical Societies in Meath and other areas
• Individual Local Historians
• Senior Citizens in Meath who remember how commonplace Field Names were in their childhood
• Students – primary, second level, and third level at both under graduate and post graduate levels
• Academic researchers in many disciplines
• Irish Place names specialists
• Genealogy researchers
• Local and National Agencies, for example Meath County Council, the Heritage Council, Archaeological Survey of Ireland
• Tourists and visitors to Meath – interesting field names and features could be detailed on the proposed new tourist trails in the county
• Other counties that plan a similar project and want to look at the research model that Meath developed for the project.

Outputs from the Project Results

As gathering of field names progressed the Steering Group had to look at how best to make all the information collected available and in what format.

The main presentation will be the project book and the project website. The website will use the digital mapping and project database in the background to enable the user to extract information. 

Quite a number of the project volunteers were of the older generation who are not all big fans of the world wide web. This group was particularly interested in a book. Even people who like to use the internet say that you cannot beat having a book to dip in and out of and keep for posterity.

Local historical societies around Meath may decide to do more work on the field names gathered for their areas. The data will be fully available to any of these groups as required.  Following on from all the work in gathering and inputting the data the Steering Group is keen that it is now used as widely as possible. This will mean that all the work was really worthwhile.

Grass, oilseed rape crop and furze in bloom in the distance at Roughgrange, Donore (photo by Joan Mullen)