One of the repositories of the Urantia Book Historical Society is the American Religions Collections at the University of California Santa Barbara, Davidson Library, one of the world’s premier historical research institutions for world religions. People come to the Special Collections Reading Room to study the outstanding collections that UCSB has assembled. As a special collections library, archives, and museum, the UCSB supports research and education by acquiring, preserving, and making accessible research collections and by sponsoring exhibitions, oral history projects, publications, and grant-funded initiatives.
The Urantia Book Historical Society serves as a donor organization and seeks donations of appropriate research materials and direct financial support. The acquisition of new research materials through gift enables us to preserve our movements valuable historical record and to offer new opportunities for research. Financial support insures preservation and access to our digital collections, promotes research through new technologies, exhibitions, educational programs, publications, and brings the collection to new audiences.

Information for Prospective Donors of Research Materials to the Urantia Book Historical Society

Many of the Urantia Book Historical Society extensive collections of books, manuscript and archival collections, sound recordings, artifacts, maps, photographs, and newspapers have been donated by generous individuals, families, or organizations who wished to help preserve and make publicly accessible the written, printed, oral, and visual history of the movement.

The UBHS welcomes having the opportunity of acquiring additional appropriate historical materials to help build its collections. We invite prospective donors, both persons and organizations, to telephone to discuss our policies and procedures for donation.

For more information, see the Society of American Archivists' "Guide to Donating Your Personal or Family Papers to a Repository" or continue reading for additional information with respect to the donating collections to the UBHS.

Donors sometimes are eligible to take a tax deduction for the market value of the materials they donate, and the UBHS advises prospective donors to consult their attorney or tax advisor for information on the possible advantages of this form of charitable giving. The market value of gifted materials is best established by the donor hiring an outside, independent appraiser who will evaluate the collection to establish market value. UBHS cannot make this evaluation. The IRS requires this outside, independent appraisal if the appraised value of a gift is greater than $5000. Additionally, the IRS requires that the University sign IRS Form 8283 acknowledging receipt of the gift.

Our Priorities

The first priority is to build our collections for research and preservation. We wish to serve a scholarly, research community that ranges from the 7th-grade student to the genealogist and the published scholar. Scholarly research annually contributes to master's theses, Ph.D. dissertations, published articles and books, documentary films, as well as to lifelong learning opportunities. Technology is essential to our goal of providing worldwide access to our unique collections. By seeking resources to investigate, acquire, install, and implement technologies that will help bring people and our collections together, both locally and off-site helps to achieve this priority. To continue to build our collections, we must be able to fund the physical transfer, organization, and preservation of collections offered as gifts. To achieve this goal, we seek private support that will help fund acquisitions on specific historic topics.

The second priority is to share our extraordinary historical resources with reader organizations. Toward that end, we seek support for programs, exhibitions, publications, touring presentations and displays, and other outreach activities that help bring readers and their history together. 

Fred Smith, artist