About half of the books in this collection are by Gützlaff, while the other half have pasted-on notes probably written by him. These books originally belonged to the Nederlands Zendelinggenootschap and the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap and were kept in the Zendelingenhuis in Rotterdam. When that institution moved to Oegstgeest in 1917, they were probably also brought along.

Around 1850, J. Hoffmann (1805-1878) had made a description of the Chinese books in the Zendelingenhuis in Rotterdam and the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap. The numbers he wrote on the books can still be seen. These descriptions are kept in the Special Collections Reading Room, Central Library (ms. BPL 2181 J 5); photocopies are kept in the Van Gulik Room, the rare books collection of the Sinological Institute. Almost all of the books on these lists are now in the Gützlaff Collection, but this Collection also has 15 titles not mentioned by Hoffmann.

In 1852, a list of 45 books by Gützlaff kept in the Netherlands was compiled by Hoffmann and published (without characters) as an appendix to H.C. Millies's Necrology of Gützlaff. Hoffmann then noted that the wrong ascriptions were written by E.H. Röttger, a former missionary in Riau, who apparently did not understand Chinese.These books were at the time kept in the libraries of the Nederlands Bijbel Genootschap, Zendeling Genootschap and H.C. Millies. All of these books can now be found in the Gützlaff collection, except one, which was lost, and six of Millies's books that ended up in the collection Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (KNAG)>

Some books have descriptions written by Gützlaff on the cover, stating the writer ("de schrijver") gave them to the Nederlandsch Zendeling Genootschap. Hoffmann’s list has 30 titles by Gützlaff; these may have been the 34 books he donated to the NZG in 1839. Copies of his New Testament translation of 1847 were perhaps donated to both NZG and the Nederlands Bijbelgenootschap during his visit to the Netherlands (including Rotterdam) in April-May 1850. Many other books have pasted-on descriptions which were probably written by Gützlaff. Finally, some books have descriptions written on the cover signed ChG or Carl Gützlaff which are not always correct, incorrectly ascribing these books to Gützlaff (some books by Gützlaff have correct ascriptions). Hoffmann already noted these wrong descriptions on his lists and sometimes corrected them on the cover. These descriptions were written in another hand than Gützlaff’s.

The original Gützlaff Collection has 79 items and the Supplement has 30 items (Gutz 80-109), in total 109 items. The former were those acquired from the Zendingshuis in the 1980s, while the Supplement contains books and tracts that were already in the Sinological Institute around 1930, but most of which had not yet been catalogued. On some of the latter the name of the German missionary R. Kröne is written, who was active in the 1850s.

Most of the items, i.e. those with shelfmarks Gutz 1-79, were acquired around 1980 from the Zendingshuis (Mission House) in Oegstgeest for the library of the Sinological Institute, by its librarian John T. Ma (Ma Daren). The rest (Gutz 80-109 and the nos. Gutz 7B, 10B, 43b, 57b, 62B, 64B) were already in the Sinological Institute around 1930. These titles were probably acquired from the H.C. Millies (1810-1868) collection in the 1870s.