During his academic work in the United States, historian Jere Jareb gathered a collection of books and other publications that he needed for his writing, primarily about the history of Croatian people. He was additionally active in preserving the cultural and historical heritage of Croatian emigrants, which he also collected. After the fall of the communist regime in Croatia, Jere Jareb attempted to move the collection to his homeland, fearing that his family would not keep it after his death, since it was not uncommon that heirs failed to recognise the importance of such legacies (Interview with Jareb, Mario). At the beginning of the 1990s, he established contact with the Croatian Institute of History, which expressed an interest in reprinting his book Pola stoljeća hrvatske politike (reprinted and published in 1995). These links were the point of departure for the idea to donate his library to the Croatian Institute of History. In 1995, Jere Jareb returned to Croatia for the first time, where he spent several months preparing the transfer of his library to Zagreb. The Institute hired its employee, historian Mario Jareb, a distant relative of Jere, who travelled to the United States in late 1996 and spent six months preparing and packing the books and documentation for relocation. In the spring of 1997, the collection was delivered to the Institute in containers, where it was housed as a separate collection in the Institute’s library. Jere Jareb financed the transfer. Newspapers and journals from Jareb's legacy were separated and stored in the National and University Library in Zagreb, while documents (grey literature) were transferred to the Croatian State Archives in 2002.