The OU SLIS 2026 Outstanding Alumni Winner is Sara Schieman. Sara has passionately served the Oklahoma library profession for 26 years. She served as the Mabel C Fry Public Library Director until her retirement in 2025. During her career she served in multiple OLA positions including the CATS roundtable chair and Advocacy member. She worked with ODL as the Public Library Directors Council chair and on the Donna Norvell Memorial Award Committee. She also did diligent work with incarcerated youth through the "San Jose Way" project and received the Ruth M Brown Award for Books Behind Bars. Even after retirement she continues to serve libraries through volunteer work and advocacy.
The 2026 School of Library and Information Studies Alumni Association Student Work Award was awarded to Nydia Campbell for her paper "1,000 Books Before Kindergarten: Community Relations and Advocacy Project". The program proposal was developed in Dr. Buffy Edwards Community Relations and Advocacy course in Fall 2025. In the paper, Nydia describes a proposed program for the Western Plains Library System that is designed to encourage early literacy skill development in children who are ages 0-5. Her proposal outlines the rationale for the program, marketing plan including a social media marketing campaign, communications and public relations strategy, timeline, and advocacy plan.
