Request for Diocesan maps - Final year college project for St Vincent De Paul

ballybay_eh

Hi,

My apologies if this doesn't fit in exactly with the theme of this forum but I'm in my final year in Trinity College doing a course called Management Science and Information Systems Studies. We have to do a final year project and I chose to do mine for St Vincent de Paul.

A quick bit of background on the project
The project involves the mapping of SVP's conferences. Conferences are the groups of volunteers that carry out a variety of charitable and community activities for an area. Because of SVP's tradition (although there are some more complex reasons) conferences and councils are not logically structured. Current conferences are based on the Diocesan Map. Unfortunately, nowadays very few people needing the society’s help are really aware of parish and diocesan boundaries.

This causes much confusion and delay in responding to requests for help. There are many examples of instances where someone seeking help from the society has been bounced around the organisation for weeks before someone was identified who could help. Unfortunately, there are times when families who have asked for help and did not receive it, only because the society was not clear about its boundaries. This is a problem that needs to be fixed.

Where you can (hopefully) help
So, I need to try and get a hold of this conference information. I think the best place to start would be the Diocesan maps. From speaking with my contact in SVP though, I understand that these can be difficult to get hold of.

I have already contacted The National Centre for Geocomputation, Maynooth as I feel they might be able to help. Does anyone now of any other organisations or individuals who may be able to help with this information? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Liam

dory

Sounds like a great project.
There is a place in Maynooth, I'm pretty sure it's different to the one you've checked. I don't know exactly what it is, but when I worked with a charity there, that was where we got information on every bishop in Ireland, and their address. It seemed to be like the HQ of the bishops. So, if you checked there they might have it.
Do you know Maynooth Campus at all? This place I'm talking of is the building left of the library, when you're looking at the library, on the old campus.
Good luck with it!

star gazer

moved from volunteerism to christianity where hopefully the question can be answered.

Pompey Magnus

Have you a particular study area that you are focusing on or are you looking for every diocese in the country?

Also what format would you be looking for the data? Are you using mapping software like ArcMap in which case you would need shapefiles or would you be just looking to display the boundaries over an OS map in PDF format?

Fanny Cradock

You might get a better response by going straight to the church itself. I'm sure they would have boundary maps. Failing that OS maps might be of some use.

ballybay_eh

Thanks for the help so far guys.

I'm trying to get a complete map of parishes and dioceses across Ireland as there is a lot of cross over between the boundaries of the parishes and the conferences.

Still at the early stage of planning but currently I plan to use GoogleEarth. Although if anyone knows of a more suitable (free) program I very much open to suggestion.

I can take the maps and apply them as overlays on top of the maps in GoogleEarth. At least, thats the plan at the minute.