Requests for Access and Archives Policies

Historical Questions

If you have historical questions about the university or the ministry of Oral Roberts, please feel free to email archive@oru.edu and we will try our best to provide answers to your questions. However, if a question requires considerable research, these inquires may require the person to make an in-person visit to uncover the needed information. We cannot do research for individuals or provide materials through scanning and sending.

Schedule a Research Visit

The ORU Archives is a research archive and we welcome approved researchers who wish to make an appointment to visit. All research must be done in person, as we currently do not have an online index of materials. Questions about materials can be sent to archive@oru.edu.

Access to the ORU archives for Guest Researchers is granted according to the following policies:

• All guests must fill out a Request for Access Form (click or see below) to be approved for access.
• Researchers must have a legitimate academic research reason for visiting, which could include institutional, scholarly or journalistic research projects. The Archives is not open to personal interest research.
• Materials accessed are for personal research purposes only. Photocopies of materials can be made with permission, but no materials shall be distributed or published in any form.

If you cannot visit and know what materials you would like access to, you may make a request using this form: External Request Form. Please note, that Archival staff cannot do research on behalf of individuals. If you need to explore the holdings to find what you need, you must make an in-person visit.

**Note: Oral Roberts University does not own copyrights to Oral Roberts Ministries materials. We cannot authorize use of any Oral Roberts writings, photographs or other materials for publication or distribution. These types of inquiries should be directed to Oral Roberts Ministries under the leadership of Richard Roberts. https://oralroberts.com/**

Access Levels

The University Archives is dedicated to the Universal Declaration of Archives standards: promoting the widest possible impartial access and upholding the legal and privacy standards that govern access. Because of this, materials in the ORU Archives fall into the following categories:

• Items that can be freely accessed for legitimate academic research facilitated by the archivist. These include publications, mailings, vertical files and other archival materials.
• Items of historical academic research value that require special permission to access facilitated by the archivist. These may be correspondence, internal documents or other materials that may need to be accessed for their historical value.
• Restricted Internal – Items that are restricted for external use, but are approved for institutional access or special reference for historical information.
• Restricted Private – Items of private or personal nature that were intended for private storage or are protected legal materials.

Because of these levels of protection of sensitive materials, not all materials can be made available to researchers. Access is determined by the Archivist and the university administration.