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Since 1945, public libraries in France have occupied an important place in the publishing world, producing books to enhance their collections. These publications provide an interesting way to study the relationship between cultural mediation and heritage. Mediation does not just display heritage; it also strongly contributes toward creating it from scratch. Three periods emerge. From about 1945 to 1970, libraries stuck to traditional delineations of heritage, focusing on manuscripts, incunabula, prints, and precious bindings, for example. In the 1970s and 1980s, libraries explored contemporary national or regional literature and thus participated in the canonization of authors and works. Since 1990, as they have been forced to reinvent themselves, they have engaged in the patrimonialization of unpublished objects, without much connection with the world of the book.