Welcome to the Charles Babbage Institute

The Charles Babbage Institute (CBI) is an archives and research center dedicated to preserving the history of information technology and promoting and conducting research in the field. CBI is located in Elmer L. Andersen Library, a state-of-the-art facility designed for Archives and Special Collections. Primary support for CBI is provided by the University of Minnesota, through the College of Science & Engineering and the University Libraries. Additional support is provided by corporate donors and individuals through the Friends of CBI.

CBI Archives

The CBI Archives collects, preserves and provides access to rich archival collections and rare publications documenting the history of information technology. Detailed archival finding aids are available. Researchers can also access digital collections and one of the world's largest collections of research grade oral history interviews (CBI's Oral Histories) through the CBI Web site. More »

CBI Research Program

CBI conducts major sponsored research projects with support from the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, DOE/Los Alamos, and DARPA. Our projects typically entail extensive research-grade oral histories, unique archival collecting, and peer-reviewed scholarly publications—creating an infrastructure for computer history. CBI research is published with MIT Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Wiley/IEEE Computer Society, ACM Books, and IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. CBI also supports research outside the Institute (Tomash Fellowship and Norberg Travel Grant) and works collaboratively with individuals and organizations throughout the world. More »