Dan Huckabay, President

Dan is a senior lender with Centennial Bank. He is a graduate of the University of Central Arkansas and Southern Methodist University Graduate Banking School. He enjoys hunting, fishing, yard work and time with his granddaughter. Dan is a former member of the Pope Co Library System Board of Directors. Both of his adult daughters spent many hours at the Dover Library in their pre-school and summer reading programs and other children related activities provided by the library. He is a firm believer that a solid foundation of reading and literacy for children is the key to a successful adulthood.

Suzanne Alford-Hodges, Vice President

Suzanne Alford-Hodges, is a retired retail business owner who is active in local historic preservation, literacy, community gardening and food security.

Amy Aikman, Treasurer

Amy is a C.P.A. for Moore & Aikman, CPA Consulting and Tax Firm in Russellville.

Shawn Pierce, Secretary

Shawn Pierce became the System Director of the Pope County Library System in 2012 after returning to the River Valley after 14 years. She received a B.A. in Journalism and a M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Arkansas Tech University, in 1992 and 2000 respectively. In 2008, she completed a 20-year goal to get her M.L.S. from Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. Pierce said somewhere along the way, journalism morphed into librarianship.

In both, she was interested in people and their stories, access to information and intellectual freedom. She says, “I liked librarianship because I didn’t have to know everything, I just needed to know where to look.” Her favorite “genre” is a good book, any good book, but mostly Biographies. In her spare time, she draws pen and ink portraits and is learning to paint with oils.

Steve Higgins, Board Member

Steve is an attorney at the Robbins Law Firm. He received his B.A. from Hobart College in 2004; his J.D. from Western New England College in 2008; and a M.S. from ATU in 2013. He is a member of the Russellville Lions Club and appreciates the importance of public service.

Bill Parton, Board Member

Bill has been the library director of the Arkansas Tech University Library since 1990. He holds a bachelor of music degree in music theory from the University of Houston and a master of librarianship from the University of Washington.

Bill pursues a number of interests in his spare time. He is an active musician and a published writer. He has written four humorous one-act plays based on Old Testament stories, “Angels, Arks, and Patriarchs,” which has been produced several times in Russellville and other communities. Bill plays trumpet in and around Russellville in jazz bands, his church, and in the pit orchestra for the summer community theatre musicals. He is an avid movie buff (especially film classics), enjoys Sudoku and other puzzles, is a fan of college football & basketball, and is active in All Saints Episcopal Church of Russellville.

Connie Zimmer, Board Member

Connie has retired from Arkansas Tech University after teaching for 23 years in the College of Education. She was a school librarian in Kentucky public schools for 18 years and worked in public libraries for two years. The classes taught at Tech ranged from Cataloging, Instructional Technology, Library Administration and several other special classes such as Preservation, Selection, and Reference.  She has a Bachelor’s degree in Library Science from Western Kentucky University, and a Master of Science in Library Science degree from Western Kentucky University.

She has served as President of the Arkansas Library Association and of the Arkansas Association of School Librarians. She serves on the boards of the Arkansas Association of Instructional Media and the Pope County Library Board of Trustees as well as on the Charlie May Simon and the Arkansas Diamond Reading state book award committees.

Currently, she is a member of the Russellville Lion’s Club and the River Valley United Way Board where she has a special interest in the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library Project.  Antiques, reading, and grandchildren are her pleasures in retirement.