The 2015 American Library Association Annual Conference kicks off today in San Francisco with more than 25,000 librarians, publishers and vendors expected to descend on the Bay Area. The conference opening session on Friday features a keynote from attorney Roberta Kaplan, who, in her forthcoming book, Then Comes Marriage: United States v. Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA (Norton), shares the story of a key gay-rights victory before the U.S. Supreme Court—a timely topic with Friday morning's High Court decision that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the country and the San Francisco's annual Pride parade set for Sunday.

Approximately 900 exhibiting companies will be on hand, and the program includes over 2,500 meetings, sessions, author events, panel discussions, and social gatherings. Among the highlights, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, will be the keynote speaker at Andrew Carnegie Medals announcements and celebration; the ALA Washington Office will feature Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and will address key policy questions including federal privacy legislation, copyright reform, Net neutrality, and federal library funding. And e-books will also be a topic in numerous session, including the ALA Office of Information Technology Policy Update which will feature talks from the co-chairs of the ALA Digital Content Working Group (DCWG), Carolyn Anthony, director, Skokie (Ill.) Public Library, and Erika Linke, associate dean of at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries.

Check out the PW website for reports from the conference. And you can check out PW's entire ALA 2015 Spotlight, for a preview of some of the authors and hot topics that will take center stage at the show:

ALA 2015: Summer of Love: As librarians are getting ready for a blockbuster 2015 ALA Annual Conference in San Francisco, PW looks at the strong slate of authors and speakers set for the ALA 2015 main program.

ALA 2015: Pride and Programming: PW columnist Brian Kenney, a former editorial director of Library Journal and the current director of the White Plains (N.Y.) Public Library offers his annual "highly subjective" picks from the ALA 2015 Professional Program.

ALA 2015: Hacking Libraries: An abridged excerpt from John Palfrey’s acclaimed new book Bibliotech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google. Palfrey is head of school at Phillips Andover Academy, and the founding chairman of the Digital Public Library of America.

ALA 2015: All in the Family: PW contributor Shannon Maughan looks at the the rise of Family Place libraries, a national program that promotes the idea of the library as a community hub for early childhood and family development.

ALA 2015: The Battle to Save the New York Public Library: PW talks with Scott Sherman, author of Patience and Fortitude: Power, Real Estate, and the Fight to Save a Public Library, a riveting, deeply reported account of the New York Public Library's controversial, ill-fated plan to drastically remake the iconic 42nd St. Library in Manhattan.

ALA 2015: What’s Next for Scholarly Publishing? PW Talks to John J. Regazzi, The former CEO of Elsevier and the author of the new book: Scholarly Communications: A History from Content as King to Content as Kingmaker

ALA 2015: Comics: Not Just for Kids: At libraries across the U.S., comics and graphic novel collections have shown strong, well-documented growth among children and teens. But adult comics collections have lagged, even as the genre has surged in popularity, and gained critical acclaim. PW's Heidi MacDonald looks at why that could soon change.

ALA 2015: Fun with Metadata: PW columnist Peter Brantley looks offers a look at how RDF and new metadata standards can vastly improve book discovery.