It is an extra-university institute collecting and archiving Sorbian texts and cultural artifacts making them available to the public.
In 1992, the Sorbian institute was established by a treaty of the two German states Brandenburg and Saxony.
[4] A new office building to be shared with the Sorbian museum is planned at present in Bautzen.
[7] The institute edits the academic journal Lětopis since 1952 and two further book series.
[10] It maintains the publicly usable Central Sorbian Library (Sorbische Zentralbibliothek; Serbska centralna biblioteka)[11][12] and the Sorbian Cultural Archives (Sorbisches Kulturarchiv; Serbski kulturny archiw), both accommodated in its Bautzen main office.