The Yugoslav Collection of the Hoover Institution originated with the substantial documentation from Yugoslav delegates to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It also has excellent holdings of secondary material, both contemporary and more recent, dealing with the myriad problems of border delineation and the internal workings of the Yugoslav representation in Paris. Early in 1921 Professor Frank A. Golder gathered material from the recently formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. The collection is strongest in the areas of World War I and II, especially their internal political and social aspects, the evolution of the Yugoslav Communist Party, and the emergence of a socialist society in Yugoslavia after 1945. Important archival collections include the papers of Dragisa Cvetkovic, Konstantin Fotitch, Milan Gavrilovic, Friedrich Katz, Vladimir J. Milanovic, Dusan Petkovic, and Mladen I. Zujovic.

The violent breakup of Yugoslavia is documented in a unique series of photographs by the Polish photojournalist Krzystof Miller. The situation in Bosnia during the 1990s is documented by a large collection of posters, leaflets, video and audio recordings, and microfilmed copies of the most important periodicals generated by all the major participants in the conflict. A recently acquired large Albanian photographic collection, that of Roland Tasho, includes several hundred pictures covering the crisis and humanitarian tragedy in Kosovo during 1999–2000.