It was discovered on 30 August 1981, by American astronomer Edward Bowell at Anderson Mesa Station, Arizona, United States.
[1] In August 2012, a rotational lightcurve of Barks was obtained from photometric observations by astronomers at the Oakley Southern Sky Observatory (E09) in Australia.
[8] This concurs with observations taken at the Palomar Transient Factory in January 2011, which gave a period of 6.087 hours and an amplitude of 0.28 magnitude (U=2).
[7] This minor planet was named for American cartoonist Carl Barks (1901–2000), best known for the fictional character Scrooge McDuck he created while working at Walt Disney in the late 1940s.
[2] Peter Thomas, an assistant of Cornell University, proposed the idea of naming an asteroid after Barks.