My great friend Trevor Haywood, who has died aged 71, was dean and emeritus professor of human information systems at the University of Central England (formerly Birmingham Polytechnic and now Birmingham City University). He was also a historian, photographer, film-maker, writer and politician.

Trevor was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, the son of George and Violet, who were carpet workers. He went to a local secondary modern school and then to a further education college. He started his working life as a metallurgist with a chain manufacturer.

However, he decided to take a different path. After getting a job as a librarian in Kidderminster, he went on to study librarianship at the Birmingham College of Commerce. It was there that he started work on his film, Iconicus, sadly unreleased; he also became a keen member of the debating society.

In the late 1960s, he took up the post of lending librarian at Aston University and, in 1971, he was appointed senior lecturer in library management at Birmingham Polytechnic. He was a superb lecturer and helped to transform library management into human information systems.

In 1973 he entered politics, and won a seat for Labour on the newly formed Wyre Forest district council, becoming leader at its first meeting, in which role he proved himself a forceful moderniser. As his politics took a back seat – he stood down after two terms – taking pictures became more important to him, with his first book on photography, Walking With a Camera in Herries Lakeland, published in 1986.

In the same year he became dean of the faculty of computing and information studies at Birmingham. He received his professorship in 1992 and reinforced his international reputation with powerful books – Info Rich, Info Poor: Access and Exchange in the Global Information Society (1995) and Only Connect: Shaping Networks and Knowledge for the New Millennium (1999) – on the growth of networked technology.

By the 1990s Trevor was spending much of the year in Portugal and delighted in delivering history lectures on cruise liners. In 1997, he took early retirement from UCE.

His study of the deaths and burials of British kings and queens, Flesh & Bone: The Lives, Deaths and Funerals of British Monarchs, was published in 2007. In order to produce it, he had carried out extensive research at the royal archive in Windsor, starting with the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066.

He is survived by his wife, Susan, his daughter, Tracy, and sister, Christine.