First among these libraries to return to Belgium was that of Father Jozef Mullie. In the 1970s  Mullie donated his library on Chinese linguistics to the Leuven University library, where it later became the first sinology departmental library. Alongwith his books and archives, Mullie also donated an impressive collection of Manchu, Tibetan, Mongolian and Chinese manuscripts and old prints to the University's archives.  Mullie's collection is now University property.

Proactive locating and acquisition of collections did not begin until the Verbiest Institute was founded.  In the 1990s, the Institute inherited the late Father Joseph J. Spae's impressive library on Buddhism,  Japanese religion, and Christianity in modern China. This was later followed by the library of the Oriens Institute, founded by Spae after World War II and one of the first interreligious institute in modern Japan.

In 1993,  the Library acquired the private libraries and papers of  some of the greatest scholars in Oriental studies of the 20th century, all  CICM missionaries who had served in the Mongolian borderlands of China, Fr Antoon Mostaert, Fr  Louis Schram, Fr Paul Serruys and his brother Henry Serruys,  Fr Willem Grootaers, and others. Their collection added several new points of gravity to the library: Mongolian studies,   Chinese oracular script, and Chinese folklore.

More collections followed, such as J.B. Van Loon's library on Central Asia (in 1993 and 1995); Fr Joseph Schyns' fine collection of Chinese novels published and purchased in China in the first half of the 20th century;  and the library of the Foyer des Étudiants Chinois in Brussels, containing hundreds of anti-mainland China pamphlets and books spread in Europe by the nationalist KMT government in Taipei between the 1950s and late 1980s.

A less academic, but equally valuable collection do provide the private archives of Fr Dries Van Coillie.   Detained in China after the Communist takeover, and later expelled, Fr Van Coillie became a widely asked lecturer on China in Belgium throughout the 1950s  to the '70s.  His massive collection of articles, paper clippings and random notes are an important witness to the China-image in the West during this period.   

In 2007 a new stage in the history of the library began, that of the pupils of the CICM scholars.   Two important donations were made in this year:  a massive  6,000 volumes on Mongolian studies by Igor de Rachewiltz and a smaller, but unique collection of books,  journals and objects on the language and culture of the Dungan people in Central Asia by Svetlana Rimsky-Korsakoff Dyer.

The Verbiest Institute is committed to upholding the memory of these scholars,  by keeping their libraries together and making them accessible to external readers.  

The Library presently holds about 26,000 volumes and still expanding.  It does not intend to keep up to date in all its branches.  Some subjects will no longer be covered, such as Chinese oracular script, while a limited number of areas of interest have been set apart for special attention, viz.  Chinese frontier studies, particularly Inner and Outer Mongolia; history of the Church in modern and contemporary China;  Chinese-language scholarship on Christianity;   and State and Religion in East Asia. 

The library will also be the repository to an  number of unfinished projects, bequeathed by individual scholars for the explicit use by future generations of bona fide research students.  These will be made accessible upon prior agreement and on a strictly ad hoc basis.