Doctrine is a PHP library that provides persistence services and related functionality. It includes an object relational mapper (ORM) for mapping database records to PHP objects, and a database abstraction layer (DBAL). Other libraries include an object document mapper (ODM) for NoSQL databases, common annotations, caching, data fixtures, and migrations. The presentation provides an overview of each library and how to use Doctrine for common tasks like mapping classes, saving and retrieving objects, and schema migrations. Help and contribution opportunities are available on Google Groups, IRC channels, and the project's GitHub page.