The Laboratory, established on April 23, 1996 as a research structure of the Department of Linguistics of the University of Calabria, collects all the specific archival and documentary skills present in the University. It has established itself as a national reference structure for research and consultancy activities in the fields of organization and management of documentation, indexing and classification systems and knowledge and content management, also obtaining the recognition of a UNESCO accredited center and the assignment of particular and significant orders from public and private clients. In the same areas, it promotes and manages post-graduate and post-graduate training activities, as well as technology transfer for public administrations.

The Laboratory, which houses the Center of Excellence in Economics and Knowledge Management and the Cosenza office of the Institute of Informatics and Telematics of the National Research Council, has developed an integrated structure that sees universities and CNR operating in synergy in a model oriented the integration between academic culture and application and industrial reality. As a research facility, it has hosted, over the years, PhD students who, after a mandatory period of stay abroad at consortium offices, formed the nursery from which most of the research staff currently employed in the laboratory and the CNR research unit with an employment rate far above the national average and almost double that of the region.

From its inception to the present day, the Laboratory has established collaboration and consultancy relationships with numerous national and international public and private entities, successfully participating in calls for research and consultancy activities towards the public and private world.