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Company Information

Address: C/ Alenza, 4, 5ª planta | 28003 Madrid (España)

Phone: (+34) 914 32 08 88 | email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Digitalisation, Software for Virtual Libraries, Archives and Museums, R&D&I

DIGIBÍS is an R&D&I software engineering company specialised in software development in the field of information exchange and management on the World Wide Web. Our area of activity mainly focuses on Libraries, Archives, Museums and Documentation Centres.

We also provide a metadata-enriched digitalisation service which, as our software, strictly adheres to international regulations from Europeana, the W3C, the Library of Congress and other international institutions.

DIGIBÍS is a pioneering Spanish company in the digital sector. Among its clients, it can count public bodies (Ministries, governments of Autonomous Communities, Cities) and private organisations, in Spain and abroad.

Recreación del logo de DIGIBÍS en perspectiva

 [An online DIGIBÍS presentation]

DIGIBÍS organises its operations around the following areas:

  • Software for Digital Libraries, Archives, Museums and Documentation Centres
  • Digitalisation
  • Services

History

Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi

DIGIBÍS was founded in 1996, the product of the cutting-edge corporate vision of Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi (1921-2001), creator of the MAPFRE System, chief executive at MAPFRE from 1955 to 1990 and the founder of several Foundations, both as a MAPFRE executive and individually. The last of these is the one that, after his death, was renamed the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation.

Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi quickly appreciated the efficient benefits that can be obtained from new digital technologies for the preservation and dissemination of Latin American cultural and intellectual heritage and, therefore, he became a pioneer in Spain in their application to new projects.

In the second half of the 1990s, he had already managed to produced a large collection of CD-ROM disks of the Tavera Classics Collection, promoted by him, with important digitalised historical publications related to Latin American arts, culture, architecture, sociology, economics and science.

He is also behind the important digital edition of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, which can be accessed from the Hispanic Division website located at the prestigious Library of Congress of the United States.

He did all this specifically through this company, DIGIBÍS, which he founded and which took its first steps under his leadership.

Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi created DIGIBÍS in the midst of the lack of development that new technologies experienced in our country back then, always depending on foreign licences. He resumed his role as an entrepreneur (he had already retired from MAPFRE) and created, as a subsidiary of the Ignacio Larramendi Foundation, a company specialising in digitalisation, especially of old funds, as well as in the development of wholly Spanish applications for document management.

From the outset, the applications adhered to international regulations to facilitate the exchange of information at a global level.

Joaquin van den Brule

Joaquín van den Brule was the first director of DIGIBÍS until the year 2000 and he gave the company, working together with Ignacio Larramendi, an adequate structure to develop the projects that the latter had established and that would also allow it to engage, in the early years of new information technologies, in third-party projects.

It was precisely under his leadership that the aforementioned digital edition of the Handbook of Latin American Studies was developed, representing one of DIGIBÍS's milestones at the time.

Tachi Hernando de Larramendi

After the death of Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi y Montiano in 2001, his daughter, Tachi Hernando de Larramendi Martínez, took over the company. At that time, with a consolidated company structure, the fast evolution of the Internet and the necessary use of the World Wide Web for the preservation of the historical heritage stored in archives, libraries and museums, the work of the company greatly focused on the creation of digital or virtual libraries as well as digital archives and museums. This was done with strict compliance with international regulations and, especially, with those stemming from from Europeana since its implementation.

It should be noted that, when the Digital Public Library of America launched its website in April 2013, there were only two apps available in their application page, one of them being the one that DIGIBÍS developed to perform searches in that Digital Library and Europeana at the same time.