The Serrurier collection, the collection of old Japanese books, manuscripts and maps at the Leiden University Library, is also known as the 'Siebold collection'. Other parts of this collection are kept in the Museum Volkenkunde (Ethnographic Museum) and the Herbarium (now Naturalis). The history of this collection is intimately connected with the Dutch commercial presence in Japan, concentrated on the tiny artificial island of Deshima in the bay of Nagasaki . From 1640 until 1853 the Dutch were the only Europeans to be allowed access on Japanese soil.

From the seventeenth century onwards isolated items entered the University Library, such as the Fides no doxi, printed at the Jesuit press in Japan (1592)

The core of the collection, however, consists of books acquired by employees of the Dutch trading post such as Jan Cock Blomhoff (1779-1853), Johannes F. van Overmeer Fisscher (1800-1848), and, more importantly, Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796-1866). Von Siebold, a native of Würzburg , Germany, served as a physician from 1822 until 1829, when he was forced to leave. Von Siebold is still widely respected as the father of Western science in Japan, and his contribution to Japanese studies in the Netherlands cannot be overrated. This core collection of 594 items was described in the Catalogus librorum et manuscriptorum Japonicorum a Ph. Fr. de Siebold collectorum, authored by J.J. Hoffmann (1805-1878) and published by Von Siebold in 1845.

In 1858 Jan Hendrik Donker Curtius (1813-1879), the last 'opperhoofd' or chief of the Dutch settlement at Deshima, acquired c. 100 Japanese books on his final mandatory voyage to Edo to pay tribute to the Shogun.

In the course of the nineteenth century these collections were purchased by the Dutch Government and transferred to the Ethnographic Museum in Leiden, the present-day National Museum of Ethnology.