Statutory authority for the state archives and records management program is found primarily in 67 O.S. �203 et seq. and 67 O.S. �305 et seq.

The program also takes direct guidance from 51 O.S. �24A.1 et seq. [Oklahoma Open Records Act], and 21 O.S. �590 [Maintenance of financial and business records-retention and disposal procedure].

These laws are the latest in a long history of Legislative concern for efficient management of public records in Oklahoma that has its roots in the first Territorial Legislature in 1890, which made "forging, stealing, mutilating and falsifying judicial and public records and documents" a felony.

The primary basis of the current program lies in the creation of a Records Commission in 1939; passage of the act establishing the Oklahoma Archives and Records Commission in 1947; and the Records Management Act effective in 1961.

Today, tripartite responsibility for managing Oklahoma's state government records is shared by the creating agency, the Oklahoma Archives and Records Commission, and the State Archives and Records Management divisions of the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. 

By law, the Director of the Department of Libraries is the State Archivist and State Records Administrator.