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Issue 25 Autumn 1998
Esme Green Memorial Lecturer
Making a Personal Impact
Linda Hopkins		 Collections under which this
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Paper given at the
Making an impact: Youth Libraries Group Weekend Conference, Edinburgh 11-13 Sept 1998

I should start by thanking you for inviting me to give this paper, but at this precise moment I can't decide whether to have agreed to give it was an act of momentary courage on my part or one of absolute folly. I incline, I think, to the folly.

I did in fact summon sufficient common sense to demur when your Chairman 'phoned and asked me to do it. Trisha Kings proposed that this would be a good time for someone to talk about Esme and the impact of her work because nowadays very few YLG members knew of her, let alone anything about her. So I was faced with the alarming prospect of talking at some length about someone who is absolutely unknown to 98% of the audience. Not an enticing proposition you may feel.

So why, then, am I actually standing here? Partly, I guess, because your Chairman is a very persuasive woman. However, more seriously, I found that I could not turn down the opportunity to pay a personal tribute to someone whose professional achievements were outstanding, but equally to someone whose personal qualities generated not only admiration and respect but also affection and love from those of us who worked with her.

In standing here, I am very conscious of the range and excellence of previous memorial lectures, many of which were carefully researched and make an important contribution to professional thinking. This particular lecture cannot be of that tradition, and this will be an unashamedly personal and subjective testimonial to Esme and her work.

What, then, are my credentials for giving such a testimonial? They are limited, and there may be other people (perhaps in this room) who knew Esme for longer than I did. However, it was my great good fortune to be appointed as one of Esme's two senior librarians in the Education and Library Service in Nottinghamshire in 1979. I worked with Esme for 2 years, and following her retirement in 1981 I was successful in being appointed to her post as Assistant County Librarian responsible for Education and Youth Services. We remained in close touch following her retirement, and Esme became a much-valued friend to me, as indeed she was to many. There will, therefore, be other people with their own perspectives about her, which are equally as valid as mine.

Your programme title for this paper is "The personal impact: celebrating achievements in children's Librarianship...". However, I have been asked to focus my lecture on Esme herself. There is very little in writing by or about her, so I want to use my personal perspective to try and respond to the brief in 4 ways. My paper will therefore cover the following:

Who was Esme Green?
A potted professional history. Esme started working life in 1938 in Nottingham Central Library. She undertook wartime service as a petty officer in the WRNS, in radar research. After the War, she returned to Nottingham Libraries, where she studied part-time for her ALA. In 1946, she moved to York as their first Children's Librarian, two years later returning to work under the County Librarian, Lorna Paulin as organiser of Children's and Schools Libraries. In this post, she saw the appointment of first Children's Librarian in 1957; the establishment of the first holiday mobile service in 1958, and in 1964 the appointment of the first professional School Librarian. With the County Architects Department, she developed the systematic planning and design of libraries in schools. In 1968, with Eileen Colwell and Phyllis Parrott, she edited the Library Association's publication: First Choice: a basic booklist for children; an annotated list of over 600 recommended titles from all subject areas. Six years later, at Local Government Reorganisation, Esme was appointed as Assistant County Librarian for the new Nottinghamshire authority, responsible for integrating two Education Library Services (previously county and city) and nine public library services for children.

Her wider professional involvement included:

By which time, Nottinghamshire had a Schools and Children's Library Service second to none. Professional librarians had been appointed in all former county secondary schools, and many had two librarian posts where the lower school had its own resources unit. These units were developed as central to the lower school both in terms of physical arrangement of the school facilities, and in terms of the curriculum and learning programme within the school. The Education and Library Service had two well-stocked bases at Nottingham and at Mansfield. The service also coordinated the work of ten FE College Librarians around the County. We were involved in the design, specification and layout of every school library; and in the appointment and training of all school and college librarians.

Esme had to retire because of her failing health in 1981. One of her regrets was that budget cuts had prevented us from extending the full range of school library services to the former Nottingham City schools. In 1984, I had the privilege of completing this work when a significant budget increase enabled us to establish a full service to city schools, the appointment of professional librarians in the remaining Nottingham City schools, and the establishment of a Children's Library Bus in Nottingham, together with the further appointment of a Specialist Children's Services Co-ordinator for the City.

Sadly Esme died in January 1985, just over three years after her retirement, at the comparatively young age of 64.

The following year, John Taylor retired as County Librarian for Nottinghamshire, and I was appointed to succeed him. I mention this for one particular reason. Following my appointment, I received a charming letter of congratulations from Sister Patricia, a devout nun who was also Head Teacher of a local Roman Catholic primary school and a stalwart of the local School Library Association, well-known to both Esme and myself. Sister Patricia's letter was short and to the point. "Esme", she wrote, pointedly in the first tense "will be thrilled by your appointment". I have to say that neither I, nor I think Esme, shared Sister Patricia's devout sense of the afterlife, but I recall and quote this incident because it seems to me to illustrate two fundamental points about Esme.

One, that she would indeed have been thrilled, as she took great pleasure in encouraging younger staff and delighted in other people's successes; but perhaps, more importantly, she will also have been thrilled to know that someone from our background and specialism had been successful in this way.

And secondly, Sister Patricia's statement also seemed to exemplify the sense we had of Esme as a benign and continuing presence that would watch over our professional achievements.

I am conscious, in saying that, that it all sounds somewhat fey whereas Esme was a very down to earth presence. As John Taylor wrote in the LA Record Obituary "It is easy to catalogue Esme's career and achievements but it is almost impossible to convey the personality which made those achievements possible". Esme was indeed one of those rare people who inspire great affection as well as respect; and in thinking about her personal qualities a whole catalogue come to mind: she indomitable and courageous; she was forthright and trenchant; she was cheerful and cheering; she was warm and full of good humour; she was sharp and canny.

These of course tend to be personal qualities which one can only admire in others, but not replicate oneself. I want therefore to try and analyse a little more closely those particular qualities and skills which contributed to her success, and which can therefore provide lessons for us all in making our own impact on the services in which we work.

Perhaps I should say also that there were, by the way, some things that Esme was not very good at - just in case you are all thinking she was a paragon no-one could ever emulate. She was not very good, for example, at writing reports and giving conference papers - and therefore a traditional literature search in preparation for this paper produced very little hard evidence of the person she was and the skills she developed.

What follows, therefore, is not a detailed analysis of competencies, but again a personal perspective from a totally subjective viewpoint. I want to highlight four key factors which I believe contributed to Esme's effectiveness, and offer us the possibility of emulation.

Belief - Vision
I have no clue about Esme's politics, but in this her core belief, she would have been there with Tony Blair, "Education, Education, Education". She had an absolute conviction that libraries and librarians have a central role to play in the education of children and young people. She had a vision of what she wanted to achieve through these means, and she out to get it.

Persistence - Focus
Again, in his obituary of Esme, John Taylor wrote "Her influence did not come from her written reports...but from her obvious dedication, her sincerity, her good humour with all irrespective of rank or place in the hierarchy and - occasionally - from her shear cussedness in sticking to her ideals" (and John should certainly have known as he suffered from it fairly regularly). Esme's achievements were not overnight wonders; like us all, she had to stick at it, to keep up the pressure, to be persistent in steering herself and others towards the goals she aimed to achieve.

Tactics
Esme was an excellent tactician; indeed she plotted "regularly". Following a key meeting with the Deputy or Director of Education, she would come back to the Department in thoughtful mode, and having thought through her tactics would announce "Well what we'll do is...". I make no apology for the slightly military metaphor; it seems entirely apposite; Esme certainly recognised the importance of:

Choosing her ground
Looking for allies, especially in the education sector, and in developing partnerships
Planting germ of an idea (and watering it occasionally!)
Seizing the moment - taking opportunities - using chance encounters
Supporting her troops - but also making sure they worked to good effect.
Indeed John's most accurate perception in his speech at Esme's retirement party was "the essential fact about Esme's career is that she never really worked for anybody, but made sure that they all worked for her".

Standards
Esme set high standards - sometimes seemingly impossible standards - for herself, her service and for children in libraries and schools. For them only the best was good enough - and then only just.

My brief for this paper asked me to use Esme's contributions to the profession as a means of celebrating achievements in children's librarianship. I want therefore to pause for a moment and ask what have been the achievements of children's librarianship; I have only time to highlight a few general principles, rather than specific histories:

What then can we learn from all this in making a personal impact?