Celebrating Warren.(Warren Horton)

This contribution to the Festschrift is a lightly edited transcript of a short speech made at the Celebration of Warren Horton's Distinguished Career held at and hosted by the National Library of Australia on 26 March 2004--four months after his death. (1) My brief was to speak on Warren's commitment to helping young librarians.

For the record, this was the second of three formal celebrations of Warren's contribution to his chosen profession. The first took place within the Aurora (2) community in February 2004, and the third happened on the Gold Coast in September 2004 in conjunction with ALIA's Biennial Conference.

Warren Michael Horton AM. He might well have begun with: Good evening comrades ...

It is a curious thing that a man so highly feminised (thanks to Fran Awcock (3) for the phrase) would so often use such a masculine form of greeting. And it was a curious thing that a man so consistently attired in Director-General's robes would in the Aurora context choose frequently to open them to reveal the person within. Larger than life in the library; life-size in Aurora.

Jean Whyte, writing in Harry Bryan's encyclopaedia in 1989, (4) described him as 'active in library politics, at home in the bureaucracy, energetic, enthusiastic and confident.' He certainly was. She commented 'He will play a leading part in preparing Australian librarianship for the twenty-first century.' And so he did.

Through Aurora, Warren made a major contribution to identifying and developing young and sometimes not-so-young talent in librarianship in both Australia and New Zealand--and he also encouraged senior librarians from both countries to renew their commitment to our cause by acting as unpaid mentors.

Aurora is a library leadership program modelled on the Library Leadership Institute al Snowbird (supported by the Salt Lake City Public Library) and brought to Australia and run first by Brenda McConchie through AIMA. (5) Today the parent body is a non-profit, tax-exempt, financially self-sustaining foundation largely established and bank-rolled by Warren. So far seven leadership institutes have been held, producing 232 graduates. (6) Warren attended all but the last. Aurora was the last professional concern he relinquished, and back in November 2003, just days before he died, he was asking me about arrangements for Aurora 7 which was held in February 2004.