On April 27th, 1995 Barbara Kincaid retired from her position as Chief Executive Officer for Western Counties Regional Library. Barbara held this post since 1969, shortly after Western Counties Regional Library was formed as a region.
A native of Toronto, Barbara spent her professional career in rural areas of Canada, primarily in Saskatchewan and in Nova Scotia. In Saskatchewan she organized, and was the first Chief Librarian for, the Southeast Regional Library. In Nova Scotia, she worked in Cape Breton as a bookmobile librarian and at Halifax County as a children’s librarian before coming to Yarmouth.
She oversaw the opening of nine of the ten Western Counties branches. In her time the staff grew from three to over 30 full-time employees. She has been very active in professional and governmental organizations. In the early ’70’s, she spearheaded the formation of the Nova Scotia Library Association and served as its first President. She also served as Secretary of the Canadian Association of Public Libraries, a division of the Canadian Library Association. Provincially, she served on the Minister’s Task Force on Libraries in 1978. In more recent years, she played important roles on the Strategic Planning and Funding Formula committees.
In the 1980s, when Herbert R. Banks decided to give his unique Novascotiana Collection to the Western Counties Regional Library Charitable Association, Barbara was delighted to accept the honour and responsibility of processing and maintaining the collection on behalf of the association. It was under her direction that much of the work involved in making the collection accessible to scholars was done.