Forced farewell to a colleague

On 31 December we are forced to take leave of our colleague Anne Chardonnens.

Not a departure due to a well-deserved retirement this time, on the contrary. This is a young person we have to let go because of the ongoing budget cuts and the critical budgetary situation at the State Archives. Anne started at CegeSoma in November 2016 as a researcher on the MADDLAIN and ADOCHS projects. She did her PhD at ULB on the management of authorized archival descriptions in the context of linked data (which is freely accessible online). From November 2020, she replaced Florence Gillet as the person responsible for digital access to CegeSoma's collections. Anne emerged as a dynamic, innovative, pleasant and de facto indispensable colleague with a great understanding of new digital technologies.

The national resistance database launched on 21 October was her "baby". It may be called ironic that after the enormous success of the launch of this project, we have to let go the initiator and one of the driving forces due to the financial crisis situation. Other colleagues are trying to take over as many tasks as possible, thus ensuring the continued development of the national resistance database. Still, Anne's departure will have a major impact on the functioning of CegeSoma. A number of planned functionalities of the new resistance database (such as certain visualizations in geographical maps or the linking of data including references to other sources) will have to be abandoned. We are also definitely dropping CegeSoma's own digitization workshop. And the new access to certain digital collections will also be greatly delayed in the coming years. Unfortunately, we are being forced into this because of the situation.

With Anne we lose not only a warm and empathetic colleague but also someone with great scientific abilities. No doubt Anne is going to have a brilliant career ahead, but for CegeSoma and our services this means an immense loss.