In fact, some might use the term “Renaissance woman” to describe Buie, who over the years has worn a nearly unbelievable number of hats. She has conducted research and taught students, raised money, heard faculty grievances and preached sermons. She’s visited the sick and elderly in homes, hospitals and nursing homes and even helped women who have served time in prison get back on their feet.

“I am at heart a generalist librarian who loves finding connections between different resources and disciplines and sharing them with others,” she says.

Buie earned an associate degree in 1971 from Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Ky., going on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Spalding College in 1973. She studied history at Edinburgh University in Scotland for several months before moving on to the University of Kentucky, where she received a master’s degree in library science in 1975.

In 1976, the same year she began working as a library archivist at UofL, she began doing graduate work in theology at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Eleven years later, in 1987, she was ordained as a deacon to address the needs of the poor, sick and disadvantaged. Since then, she has served in church parishes in east, south and west Louisville.

In 2006, Buie earned a master’s degree from Kent School of Social Work, an accomplishment she pulled off while working full-time in her rare books job.

Buie, who says she especially enjoys collecting and exhibiting books significant to women, has built UofL’s rare books collection over the years to include more than 30,000 pieces. Among the materials she has acquired are books inscribed by American author and feminist Alice Walker to UofL professor emerita Lucy Freibert, two books printed in England by Sarah Baskerville in the 1770s and a rare offprint by Emmy Noether, an early 20th century German mathematician who made critical contributions to abstract algebra.

A founding member of UofL’s Commission on the Status of Women, Buie served on that group from 1996 to 2000. She helped establish the university’s first Women’s Center and was the first library liaison to the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. She also worked to achieve pay equity for male and female faculty and staff and to remove unrecognized gender bias from university job descriptions, accomplishments she ranks among the most significant of her career.

Buie attributes her ongoing interest in women’s issues to the “wonderful examples and mentors” she had in her life. To today’s young women trying to get ahead, she gives this advice: “Don’t forget your sisters. None of us has done it alone.”

Buie is a true Champion 4 Her.