Die Nachricht, dass Jenny Delasalle am vergangenen Freitag, den 8. Dezember 2023, nach schwerer Krankheit verstorben ist, haben wir mit großer Betroffenheit gelesen. Für die Open Access Community in Berlin und weit darüber hinaus ist ihr Tod ein großer Verlust. Wir werden Jenny als offenen, herzlichen und lustigen Menschen in Erinnerung behalten, in der Zusammenarbeit zudem sehr engagiert für eine faire offene Wissenschaft, professionell, lösungsorientiert und dabei stets den „Finger in die Wunde legend“. Wir kennen Jenny teilweise seit mehr als zehn Jahren; zuletzt haben wir im OABB mit ihr im Rahmen der AG der OA-Beauftragten der Universitäten und der Charité, beim Erstellen der Reports für das Berliner Monitoring und der Vorbereitung der Open-Access-Tage zusammengearbeitet. Wir sind von Herzen dankbar für die gemeinsame Zeit und werden sie sehr vermissen. Unsere Gedanken sind bei Jennys Familie und Freund*innen. – English below –

Wir teilen hier an dieser Stelle auf Wunsch von Jenny Delasalle ein paar Worte, die sie zum Abschied an uns als OA Community und im Speziellen ihre Kolleg*innen im Team der Medizinischen Bibliothek der Charité gerichtet hat. Es ist sicher ein ungewöhnlicher Beitrag in diesem Blog, aber wir freuen uns, dass wir auf diese Weise an Jenny erinnern können und möchten gerne auch den Raum öffnen, an diesen Beitrag anzuknüpfen. Gerne per Kommentar, per E-Mail oder auf persönlichem Weg.

Das Team der Medizinischen Bibliothek der Charité hat einen Nachruf veröffentlicht.

I want to express heartfelt thanks to all my colleagues for the times we’ve worked together, had lunch together or smiled together. Thank you for all the flowers, the good wishes and care packages throughout my illness.

The OA community in Berlin embraced and welcomed me on the scene, some of you since before I even started working at the Charité. Maxi Kindling was my first ever professional contact in Berlin! Through Maxi and IBI I met many professional contacts and indeed some friends. I am not going to go on naming names, because I am afraid of missing people out. I am on pretty high doses of painkillers as I write, so memories come and go!

Since joining the Charité in January 2018, I’ve enjoyed getting to know all the members of the Berlin and Brandenburg OA scene. To the Refubium crew at the FU, organisers of the OA Tage, coordinators of Berlin University Publishing, and authors of THE big report on percentages of OA in Berlin: you all deserve my particular thanks for cooperative work, and for including my ideas. Friendliness, openness and cooperation are the main characteristics of the OA scene in Berlin that I have enjoyed, and I like to think that I contributed to that culture.

My special thanks are of course to the Charite’s OA team (all of the team, past and present). Cooperation exemplifies the OA team, that I have enjoyed belonging to. Building the OA team itself is my proudest achievement of all at the Medical Library. I didn’t build the team alone of course: Ursula Flitner and Steffi Grimm had huge hands to play, and many others in the Medical Library, as well as each of the team. The whole process of growing our team, from interviewing and selecting good people to getting to know you properly and training you on open access, and existing processes, onwards to learning from you all about how we can do things better, brainstorming with you about problems and encouraging you to go beyond my knowledge or skills: this whole process has been a real privilege and a pleasure.

I am sure that the future OA team will continue to learn new skills, work together, support one another and care about each other. It is your caring most of all that makes me proud, especially as I have received so much of it lately.

If I may pass on some life advice, as someone blessed with the intense wisdom that comes with knowing just how short life is: remember always this last line of Philip Larkin’s famous poem: „What will survive of us is love“. Please go on being as generous to others as you were to me, please remember me as strong and smiley, and go on to live your lives as full of love and as fully as you can!

We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of Jenny Delasalle on Friday, December 8, 2023, after a serious illness. Her death is a great loss to the Open Access community in Berlin and beyond. We will remember Jenny as an open, warm, and funny person, who was also very committed to fair open science, professional, solution-oriented, and not afraid to „put the finger on the sore spot“. Some of us have known Jenny for more than ten years. Most recently, at the OABB, we worked with her in the OA Working Group of the Universities and Charité, we collaborated on the Berlin OA Monitoring reports and the organization of the Open-Access-Tage. We are very grateful for the time we spent together and will miss her very much. Our thoughts are with Jenny’s family and friends.
 
At Jenny Delasalle’s request, we would like to share a few words that she addressed to us as the OA community and in particular to her colleagues in the Charité Medical Library team. It may be an unusual contribution to this blog, but we are pleased we can remember Jenny in this way and would like to open up the possibility to follow up on this contribution. You are welcome to do so by comment, email or in person.