biography

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Andrew Green was born in 1952 in Stamford, Lincs. and brought up in South Yorkshire.  He was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield and studied Classics at Cambridge before coming to Wales to train as an academic librarian in 1973.  He worked in university libraries in Aberystwyth, Cardiff, Sheffield and Swansea, where he served as Director of Library and Information Services.

In 1998 Andrew was appointed as the ninth Librarian of the National Library of Wales, a post from which he retired in March 2013.  During his period there new audiences were attracted to the Library, its building was opened up to wider public use, the National Screen and Sound Archive, Culturenet Cymru and the People’s Collection were set up, and online services were developed, many of them based on the digitisation of existing collections.

Andrew has served on many information and educational bodies, including the Council of Aberystwyth University, the Wales Advisory Committee of the British Council and the Legal Deposit Libraries Committee.  A fluent Welsh speaker, he has published widely in both English and Welsh, especially on library and information and on the digital society topics.  He was elected an Honorary Fellow of CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) in 2015.

Andrew chaired the first strategic body concerned with the promotion of Welsh medium teaching in higher education institutions.  He was appointed to the Board of Coleg Cenedlaethol Cymru in 2013 and acted as its Chair between 2014 and 2017.

At the invitation of the Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government he chaired in 2013 an ‘Online Digital Resources Working Group’.  Its report, Open & online, was published in March 2014.

In 2013 Andrew was elected a Fellow of Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru / The Learned Society of Wales.   From 2014 to 2017 he was Chair of the Association of Friends of the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery in Swansea, and was President of the Royal Institution of South Wales 2018-19.  He chairs the board of the periodical New Welsh review.  Between 2019 and 2023 he chaired the Board of Trustees of the Strata Florida Trust.  

Andrew’s book, In the chair: how to guide groups and manage meetings, was published by Parthian Books in September 2014.  Gomer published his Wales in 100 objects and Cymru mewn 100 gwrthrych in September 2018, and in 2020 Y Lolfa published Rhwng y silffoedd, a satirical detective novel set on the campus of a Welsh university.  Later in 2024 Gwasg Carreg Gwalch will publish a new book, Voices on the path: a history of walking in Wales.