Desiderio Chilovi was born at Taio, in the Val di Non, in 1835. He went to school first in Bolzano and then in Trento, but when he had to interrupt his secondary school studies for health reasons, he developed an interest in bibliography and modern literature. He travelled for research, first to Vienna and then to Florence, where he decided to stay. In 1861 Atto Vannucci appointed him as writer at the Biblioteca Magliabechiana, with the task of improving the new catalogue.
His comprehensive overall vision of the Italian library system and his organisational talents came to light in the article Il governo e le biblioteche, published in “Il politecnico” in 1867. Ruggero Bonghi, after becoming Minister of Education, invited him to work with others in drawing up the regulations relating to libraries. In 1879 he succeeded Pietro Fanfani as director of the Biblioteca Marucelliana in Florence, a post he held until 1885 (apart from a short period spent in Rome for the reorganisation of the Biblioteca nazionale Vittorio Emanuele II), when he became Prefect of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.
His innovative and liberal ideas shaped the new Regolamento per le biblioteche italiane, written in his own hand and implemented by the minister Michele Coppino. With the aim of promoting awareness of the cultural output of Italy and of raising the profile of the national patrimony, he started the Bollettino delle pubblicazioni italiane, as well as the series “Indici e cataloghi”, which is still being published. He created an Archivio della letteratura italiana, the purpose of which was to gather together letters, manuscripts and stencilled works by contemporary authors. In so doing, he enriched the holdings of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, helping to make it the first library in Italy in terms of the size of its collections.
He died in Florence in 1905, before the completion of the project for a new building for the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, which had taken up his time and energy just as much as other initiatives.
Desiderio Chilovi was director of the National Library in Florence in the years in which the national edition of the works of Galileo took its first steps. The sincere friendship that linked him to Raffaello Caverni was possibly one of the reasons for his lack of enthusiasm as regards the plan for a national edition of Galileo (from which Caverni had in the end been excluded) and for his little sympathy towards the editor Antonio Favaro, who in confidential letters to Isidoro Del Lungo had nicknamed him (for reasons unknown) “the waterspout”.
