Sallyann Price writes: “Barack Obama addressed the closing session of ALA’s 2021 Annual Conference and Exhibition Virtual June 29. The talk marked a return to Annual for the former president, who was the conference’s opening speaker in 2005. Interviewed by Lonnie Bunch III, the first African American secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, and introduced by ALA President Julius C. Jefferson Jr., Obama talked about A Promised Land (Crown, November 2020)—the first of two memoirs spanning his paradigm-breaking presidency—and the role of libraries in shaping the story of American democracy.” Read all of American Libraries’ Annual coverage at The Scoop.