ORU Archives
The Oral Roberts University Archives is the official repository for Oral Roberts University History. The Archives is managed by the Director of the Holy Spirit Research Center and Archives, Dr. Daniel Isgrigg and Archivist Kathryn Carmichael, MLIS. The types of materials related to institutional history include:
- Vertical file cabinets of material related to individuals, programs and topics related to ORU and Oral Roberts.
- Hundreds of historical brochures, pamphlets, publication, fundraising, and commencement materials.
- Archival collection of books and materials by current and past presidents: William Wilson, Mark Rutland, Richard Roberts, and Oral Roberts.
- indexes of transcripts of chapel sermons, seminars, and other audio materials in various formats.
- 5,000 reel-to-reel tapes of chapels, ORU seminars, banquets and other important events to ORU’s institutional history.
- Hundreds of artifacts from Oral Roberts such as plaques, awards, and other memorabilia.
- Hundreds of oral history interviews conducted by former professor, Dr. Harold Paul.
These items are largely uncatalogued but are organized by material type. Inquiries about materials can be sent to archive@oru.edu.
Some ORU Archival material has been digitized for the public including the Perihelion Year book and Oracle Student Newspaper. You can view these resources here: https://digitalshowcase.oru.edu/oruc/ (opens new window)
ORU Archives is not open to the public. Access to materials can be granted to legitimate scholarly and institutional research. Please contact Dr. Daniel Isgrigg, Director, to apply for access at disgrigg@oru.edu.
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. opens new windowhttps://oralroberts.com/
Requests for Access and Policies
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 at 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.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 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 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.
