The American Library Association (ALA) closed out its first virtual Midwinter Meeting—which was also its last Midwinter Meeting, as the 107-year-old conference format will be replaced next year by ALA’s LibLearnX event—with a highly anticipated conversation between ALA President Julius Jefferson and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden.

Biden has spent more than three decades teaching in community colleges, high schools, and a psychiatric hospital for adolescents. She convened the first White House Summit on Community Colleges with President Obama in 2010, and led the Community College to Career Tour across the country to highlight industry partnerships between community colleges and employers. She continues to teach at a community college in Northern Virginia.

Biden led off the conversation by celebrating of her lifelong love of reading. When she got to college, she realized that she wanted to be a teacher, to share in the “joy and beauty” she found in books, and the connections and compassion that learning can instill.

She spoke, as well, about libraries as active repositories of knowledge and learning—“When I assign papers, the library is the first place I send my student because that’s where they learn to research”—but also about safe spaces, and places of resilience, diversity, and trust.

When Jefferson asked why Biden identified so strongly with teaching, she noted that there was always a part of herself that was thinking about her students, and added that it must be the same for the way library workers care for their patrons—“You always carry them with you.” We use every tool we have to make a difference, she said, citing libraries for distributing hotspots and food during the pandemic.

Biden spoke about the children’s book she wrote, Don’t Forget, God Bless Our Troops—inspired by her granddaughter Natalie—about what it’s like for children to miss a deployed family member. Children need to be able to access their feelings, she explained; concepts like grief are hard to explain, but when they read about what someone their own age is going through it gives them language they can understand. “We’re seeing a lot of this with COVID,” she noted, acknowledging how hard it is to explain the pandemic without scaring them. “We need to be able to tell them, ‘This is serious, but this is going to be OK,’” she said. “As educators, we know how powerful words are.”

As to her own reading, Biden admitted to having “stacks” of books going at any given time. Currently she’s reading Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, she said, recently finished Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half, and just ordered Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give.

While she did not lay out any concrete plans for her coming years in the White House, as part of the administration she and President Joe Biden plan to build, “We’re going to listen to all Americans, and we’re going to work to heal the pain” of recent years, Biden said. “We’re going to lift up those who have been ignored, and we’re going to earn your trust.”

Thank you, she told viewers, for helping people like her fall in love with books and sustain communities. “My message is: never forget that what you’re doing matters,” she said. “Right now, someone out there is a better thinker because of you. Someone is standing a little taller because you helped them find the confidence they need…. And someone is kinder because you showed them what that meant.”

“That’s why what you do matters so much,” Biden told the virtual crowd. That message came through in the brief session loud and clear: Librarians are educators. Judging from the comments streaming alongside the live feed, those watching and listening appreciated the affirmation.

Biden wasn’t the only figure from the recent inauguration to take the Midwinter virtual stage. In a five-minute special guest appearance, sponsored by Penguin Random House and Penguin Young Readers, Amanda Gorman, the inaugural National Youth Poet Laureate who captured the nation with her reading during President Biden’s inauguration (see SLJ’s “Youngest Inaugural Poet in History Impresses. Lesson Plans Available for Amanda Gorman's “The Hill We Climb’”), read from her forthcoming debut picture book, Change Sings: A Children's Anthem, illustrated by Loren Long. The event was timed to lead into the closing session with Biden.