The Palatine Library was born on August 1, 1761, when Don Filippo di Borbone, Duke of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, appoints the Theatine Paolo Maria Paciaudi from Turin as "Antiquarian and Librarian" with a decree, with which he manifests the political will to equip his dukedom of a library for public benefit and utility, pursuing an ambitious and enlightened cultural project promoted by its educated prime minister Guillaume Du Tillot.

The idea was to set up a library which one could draw on in order to engage in the study of any subject and field of knowledge: the books were ordered by six main classes, "Theology, Nomology, Philosophy, History, Philology and Liberal and Mechanical Arts", and arranged on the neoclassical wooden shelves designed by the French architect EA Petitot, inside the Palazzo della Pilotta, in that long corridor, today known as the "Galleria Petitot".

Paciaudi drew up the Catalog of the Library - introducing for the first time in Italy a big novelty for his time - no longer on a register bound in a volume, but on movable cards which reported not only the author, title and typographical notes, but also special bibliographic notes on the author itself, on the value of the content, of the edition, also adding an indication of the physical location of the volume.