Barbara Buick trained as a librarian in the early 1950s at the Queensland Teachers' College in Brisbane. She returned to Adelaide, her birthplace, and helped establish the Australian Children's Book Council and the National Children's Book Awards. Moving to Canberra in the 1960s she began lobbying for the creation of libraries in all Australian schools.
Buick spent some time working for Cheshire publishing, both in Australian and Papua New Guinea, and was a keen promoter of children's literacy in Port Moresby.
Buick was an active member of the Women's Electoral Lobby and the Women's Information Referral Exchange. She lobbied strongly for the passage of equal opportunity legislation in state parliaments. She was also an inaugural member of the board of Fremantle Arts Centre Press. Buick's correspondence with Australian writers (from her time as children's book editor with Cheshire) is now part of the Research Collection of Children's Literature at the State Library of Western Australia.
Source: Janet Buick, 'Vale Barbara Buick 1924-2007', InCite 28.7 (2007):22.
