...commodity to product to service to experience: e.g., from selling coffee beans to selling Maxwell House to serving coffee at Dunkin Donuts to providing an exotic Starbucks’ coffee permutation in its chattering, WiFi, jazz café atmosphere. --Dr. Wendy Schultz, To a Temporary Place in Time...

What value can a librarian add when so much information is now available on the web? This was a constant question that was asked during my library science studies at CLIS from 2005-2007. One answer was what was termed the "Starbucks Model." The library becomes more than just a place to find information. It becomes, as Dr. Wendy Schultz suggests, a community. More than ever before, the library becomes a place where dialogue can take place. Just as people want the convenience of finding information from their home computers, people also want a place where they can meet with others and exchange ideas, share thoughts, and bond over similar situations and experiences.

The physical library must become this "third place" (after a person's home and work) in order to adapt to the proliferation of information on the web. Additionally, the library must meet users at their place of convenience (as mentioned by Rick Anderson in Away from the "Icebergs"). This is where Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 come in. If users prefer to get their information from the web, librarians need to meet this need. Examples include offering live chat reference services and forming reader's advisory blogs (And that is just what librarians are doing!).

As I learned in grad school, now that we as a society are inundated with information, the role of the librarian becomes increasingly important in sifting through this information for quality. Librarians must add value by creating community, and providing convenient, timely, and accurate information to the user.