My father, Peter Lewis, who has died aged 91, was the British Library’s director general of bibliographic services from 1980 to 1990, a post which put him at the forefront of the library’s measures to convert its vast general catalogue from paper into digital form.

He was born in Oxford, to Charles Lewis, a colour sergeant in the British and then the Indian army, and Florence (nee Kirk), who was a lady’s maid before her marriage. Peter left the Masonic school at Bushey in Hertfordshire aged 18 in 1944, and joined the Royal Artillery towards the end of the second world war. During his military training he was based first in Glasgow and then near Watchet in Somerset.

On leaving the army he took a job as a library assistant at Brighton public library, the beginning of a career as a librarian that took in posts in Plymouth and Chester before he joined the Board of Trade (now DTI) library in London.

There he became a fellow of the Library Association and published a book, The Literature of the Social Sciences (1960). After a period at the Queen’s University School of Library Studies in Belfast, he became librarian of City University in London and then, in 1972, at the University of Sussex, moving with his family to Hurstpierpoint, near Brighton.

At the same time he continued his activities with the Library Association as vice-president and honorary treasurer, and was invited by the then recently established British Library to join the Anglo-American committee defining new cataloguing rules, which he subsequently chaired. In 1980 he moved to the British Library’s bibliographic services division, where he was in the vanguard of implementing innovative technologies and where he stayed until retirement.

Peter and his wife, June (nee Ashley), whom he had married in 1952 after they met as fellow workers at Brighton public library, then moved from Sussex to the village of Wenhaston, north Suffolk, where he plunged himself into the social life which he said the previous 25 years of committees and commuting had largely denied him. Amateur dramatics took up much of his time – he was a highly praised Falstaff and an outstanding King Lear – and he also enjoyed choral singing. He edited a history of the village, and after retiring from acting became president of his local theatre group, the Circle 67 Players.

Peter and June kept each other going resolutely and he was a dedicated carer, supporting her through severe physical disability.

June died in January. Peter is survived by their two children, Kate and me, and two granddaughters, and by his sister, Daphne.

• This article was amended on 16 May 2018, to correct a detail regarding the occupation of Peter Lewis’s mother, Florence