Valuable information at your fingertips in the Documentation Center

Oct 10, 2019 | Discover

Información de valor a tu alcance en el Centro de documentación

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“Raul, can you please get me the latest Home Insurance report published? Can you find me something about retirement in Chile? Can I download this article to read it?” These are just some of the questions received daily at the Fundación MAPFRE Documentation Center, all of which are resolved swiftly and precisely by the team of documentalists running the service.

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Specializing in Insurance, Risk Management and Social Protection, the Fundación MAPFRE Documentation Center offers the general public a consultation service which responds to queries within a maximum of 48 hours. A great many of these resources are freely available in digital form and accessible online. Furthermore, this enormous documentation center offers users the chance to consult all of Fundación MAPFRE’s publications in situ.

On a normal working day at the Documentation Center, located in Madrid, queries are received from users seeking specific documents, or the documentalists working there are asked to locate material related to a certain subject; such requests are most often received from professionals, students and researchers working or interested in the insurance sector. Of course, many of them are MAPFRE employees seeking help to gather information of value to their work, not just in Spain, but in every country in which MAPFRE operates.

Our international scope means that the www.fundacionmapfre.org/documentacion website is available in English, Spanish and Portuguese. A large part of the specialist documentation is available in these languages, given that the original language version is always maintained. Users can convey their specific information needs by email to centrodocumentacion@fundacionmapfre.org or via the contact form on the website.

MAPFRE Group employees are at an advantage with respect to external users accessing the Web Catalog, namely that, by accessing it from the Global Intranet https://intranet.mapfre.net/emp/es-es/Paginas/HomeV2.aspx (on the PEOPLE tab) and/or via the link http://wmapfre.es.mapfre.net/documentacion they are able to directly access and download much of the digital content available in the Documentation Center.

Another plus for them with respect to other users is that they can subscribe to be informed of the new additions regularly incorporated into the database. If those registered via the above links access the Documentation Center website, they can sign up in the “My Library” section to receive emails outlining the latest additions to the catalog.

Every day documentation is searched and analyzed, filtered and selected for subsequent incorporation into the catalog, where there are already over 150,000 references. The usual process involves cataloging recently published reports, new books purchased, sectoral rankings or articles from magazines to which the Documentation Center is subscribed. Title, author, abstract, and subjects are basic, essential data when it comes to cataloging, given that they facilitate the subsequent search process for users.

It is also possible to consult and make requests using the Documentation Center mobile application “FM Library”, which is available via the links for Android or IOS on https://www.fundacionmapfre.org/fundacion/es_es/apps/seguros.jsp

The monthly newsletter offers updates with a selection of the most relevant documents added over the last month, the so-called “Documentation Center’s Not-to-be-Missed”. MAPFRE employees can also collaborate by publishing an article of interest within the “Special Contributor” section. To receive the Monthly Newsletter, you must sign up using the form https://fundacionmapfre.force.com/area/UC_Ver_Formulario?form=novedades_cdoc .

Another highly popular section, most useful for compiling information on a particular topic, is that of the recommended bibliography available at https://www.fundacionmapfre.org/fundacion/en/documentation-center/bibliographies/.

MAPFRE Group employees can access the catalog directly through the global intranet and download the digital content available in the Documentation Center

Pero también es posible suscribirse a la lista de distribución. Estar en esta lista tiene la ventaja de la inmediatez, en cuanto llega el informe se envía.

Los empleados que deseen formar parte de esta lista pueden escribir al correo centrodocumentacion@ fundacionmapfre.org Otro servicio muy valorado es el de la gestión de compras, que se realiza en colaboración con el Área Corporativa de Compras y Medios con el asesoramiento y colaboración del Centro de Documentación.

Si, previa consulta en el catálogo web, un usuario no localiza un libro o revista concretos puede hacer su petición al Centro y esto permite, por un lado, centralizar toda la contratación de publicaciones en un único punto, y por otro, racionalizar al máximo las compras evitando duplicidades en las adquisiciones.

100.900 Magazine articles
20.800 Books
8.000 Safety legislative provisions at the regional, national and european
3.200 Insurance and financial rankings
1.800 Insurance legislative provisions at the regional, national and european level
675 Links to websites
410 Magazine summaries

You’re a documentalist? So, you make documentaries?

The professionals working at the Documentation Center are used to hearing this kind of question when they mention their profession.

But no… they don’t make documentaries. According to the dictionary, rather than being someone who makes documentaries, a documentalist is a specialist in documentation science.

And documentation science is defined as the discipline concerned with the collection, classification and retrieval of documents or information.