Formerly known as the Charles Babbage Foundation, it advises historians, promotes collaboration among academic organizations and museums, and assists IT corporations in preparing and archiving their histories for future studies.

[6] A new entity, the Charles Babbage Foundation, was created to help support and govern the institute, in partnership with the university.

[8] CBI also encourages research in the area and related topics (such as archival methods); to do this, it offers graduate fellowships[9] and travel grants,[10] organizes conferences and workshops, and participates in public programming.

Oral histories with important early figures in the field have been conducted by CBI staff and collaborating colleagues.

One author called the set of CBI oral histories "a priceless resource for any historian of computing.

It is now a center at the University of Minnesota, and is located on its Twin Cities, Minneapolis campus, where it is housed in the Elmer L. Andersen Library on the West Bank.

The CBI has collections of archival papers and oral histories from many notable figures in computing including: CBI was founded in 1978 by Erwin Tomash and associates as the International Charles Babbage Society, and initially operated in Palo Alto, California.