Staff Bios

Charles Cason, Chief Financial Officer - Charles has served as Director of Business and Accounting Services for Amigos since May 1999, responsible for managing the organization’s business operations and monitoring its financial performance. Previously, Charles served as Director of Administration for the North Texas Council of Governments, one of a number of positions he held with that organization. He is a graduate of Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, TX, where he received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Accounting, and Bachelor of Arts degree in Bible and Psychology. Charles served in the U.S. Army at Fort Bliss, TX, where he held the rank of captain.

Bonnie Juergens, President and Chief Executive Officer - Bonnie Juergens has been President and Chief Executive Officer of Amigos Library Services since 1989.

She earned her MLS from the University of Arizona, Tucson, and her BA from MacMurray College, Jacksonville, IL. She has worked for two regional library networks, a library automation vendor, in both academic and public libraries, and has provided consulting services to libraries of all types.

Juergens has served on the American Library Association Council, as a member of the Board of Directors of the Library & Information Technology Association, and as a Delegate to the OCLC Members Council. She chaired the Committee responsible for developing the Texas Library Association's Leadership Development Program [TALL Texans] and served on its Steering Committee from 1992-1996. She worked with library leaders throughout Texas to plan and implement TexShare, a statewide library resource-sharing program that serves over 600 libraries across the state, many of which are Amigos members.

Juergens has published a variety of articles on library resource sharing, technology training, and application of information technology in libraries.

Arta Kabashi, Continuing Education Librarian - Arta provides training, support and consulting services for Amigos member libraries in the areas of Reference, Virtual Reference, Reference Technologies, Social Networks and Customer Service Skills. Prior to joining Amigos, Arta worked at the University of North Texas, and Texas Tech University. She holds Bachelor of Arts in History from Harding University, Master of Arts in History from Texas Tech University, Master of Science in Library Science and currently pursuing a Ph.D. in information Science.

Arta teaches and consults in the areas of reference workflows, roving reference, virtual reference platforms, social media ,reference technology planning, user experience, website accessibility, ebooks and ereaders, and teaching in online environments. She presents annually in state conferences in subjects relating to reference, reference technologies, and user experience in the library.

Laura Kimberly, Chief Member Services Officer - Laura coordinates training, educational, and consulting programs for Amigos and oversees the Trans-Amigos Express courier program and activities related to Amigos’ partnership with OCLC. She has been with Amigos more than 25 years as a trainer for cataloging and technical services and as manager of training and support services. She has produced the programming for the Amigos member conferences and was instrumental in developing Amigos’ distance and online learning programs. Also, Laura administers the Amigos Board of Directors’ Fellowship and Opportunity Award program.

Previously Laura held positions in cataloging, acquisitions, and technical services at the Law Library, Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Judges Library. She is actively involved in several professional associations including the Arizona Library Association and American Library Association. Laura holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in library science from Florida State University and has earned a Professional Development Certificate in Distance Learning from the University of Wisconsin.

Gina Minks, Imaging & Preservation Service Manager - Gina Minks has been the Imaging and Preservation Service Manager at Amigos Library Services since 2005 and is the Project Director for Amigos’ Education and Training grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a member of AIC-CERT (American Institute for Conservation Cultural Emergency Response Taskforce), Chair of the AIC-CERT Working Group and one of eight national mentors for the Council of State Archivists IPER (Intergovernmental Preparedness and Emergency Response) project. She is an active member of ALA-ALCTS serving on various membership committees.

Prior to coming to Amigos, Gina was at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as part of their Electronic Text Center and the University of Tulsa – McFarlin Library, where she served as a Special Collections Librarian and Web & Digitization Services Librarian. While at the University of Tulsa, she was active with Amigos committees and the recipient of two Amigos Fellowships.

Christine Peterson, Continuing Education Librarian - Christine provides training, support and consulting services for Amigos member libraries in the areas of Internet and technology. Prior to joining Amigos, Christine worked for eight years as the automation consultant and then manager for the Continuing Education and Consulting Department of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Before that, she was the systems librarian for both San Antonio College and the Florida Institute of Technology. She holds Bachelor of Science in Music and Master of Library Science from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Christine teaches and consults in the areas of ebooks and ereaders, teaching in online environments, CONTENTdm (OCLC's digital asset management system), technology planning, social media, open source software, RFID, HTML, website design, website accessibility, Cascading Style Sheets, mobile website creation and design, and XML. She tries very hard to keep up with the technological landscape and annually presents the interesting and engaging session "Playing Catch-up with Technology" which covers what we missed in the past year.

Tim Prather, Continuing Education Librarian - Tim handles training, support, and consulting for Amigos member libraries related to OCLC resource sharing services including interlibrary loan, document delivery and union listing. He served previously as Interlibrary Loan Librarian at the Austin Public Library and at Texas A & M University's Sterling C. Evans Library. Tim has an MLS and a BA in English from the University of Texas at Austin.

Bill Walker, Imaging Field Services Officer - Bill is the metadata and digitization expert at Amigos. His courses cover all aspects of digital projects and metadata, including cataloging and RDA. Prior to joining Amigos in 1996, Bill served as Music Cataloger at Southern Methodist University. He has a Bachelor of Music degree in classical guitar and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, a Master of Music in music theory and a Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Texas, Denton.