First of all, thank you thank you thank you for all of the lovely comments, tweets and emails! It’s been a real “magic of the Internet” kind of week. Several people have commented on my killer new title. What can I say? Only at Darien, people.

What was Reference became Information Services will be Knowledge Services. The $64,000 question is “What is the future of Reference?” I don’t claim to have any definitive answers. Like Helene, I’m not wild about the phrase “reinventing reference,” though I think it’s born out of a frustration with using old tools and models to work on something that keeps changing. Reinventing sounds quicker than evolving, a faster solution to the head-banging aggravation a lot of front lines folks feel. Plus, you can’t beat the alliteration.

Reference is a complicated animal and like all species, its evolution will involve wrong turns, complicated misadventures and convoluted successes. Each library will cherry-pick procedures and innovations and find the toolkit that makes them fittest.

The phrase “information services” is frequently preferred to the term “reference” to describe what I have been known to call the “look it up” department of libraries. No one knows what “Reference” means anymore and Information was a hot buzzword about ten years ago, but libraries aren’t the phone operator and Service has been something of a buzzword too, so “Information Services” became the favored phrase. People still don’t really know what it means, but I think it’s been helpful to have the word “Services” in there.

Libraries want to be the third place and no one wants to spend time in a building where the staff isn’t at least a little service-oriented. Starbucks, while ostensibly a purveyor of coffee, is (arguably) a leader in the third place movement. The company prides itself on the “experience” of a Starbucks (evidently, this is why we’re happy to pony up $5 for fancy coffee drinks) and their service is a big part of that. The baristas give discounts to regulars, free drinks to cheer people up and generally develop a very unchain-like relationship with their neighborhoods.

On a recent visit to an area Starbucks, I was more impressed than usual by one barista. The store was crowded, with a line that stretched to the door. There were two people making drinks and ringing people up and one exceptional person running the show. She took orders, got food and regular cups of coffee and kept the line moving. She was relentlessly good-humored and helpful, running out from behind the counter to show a customer that the boxes of Cranium they had on display were just the new edition and not a different version. She kept her coworkers moving and managed to chat with customers about other products and services they’d be interested in, without being sales-y, just genuinely helpful. When I noted that I hadn’t seen sugar-free gingerbread syrup (my $5 lattes are for *science*) in years past, she told me that a customer had just come in and gleefully bought a bottle of the syrup to use at home. For the record, I did not buy a bottle, but I also didn’t think she was trying to sell me anything, just cheerfully telling me that other people are happy about sugar-free gingerbread, too.

She was a force of service to be reckoned with, but watching her manage a store full of people and her co-workers (there was no doubt that regardless of title, she was the one in charge) made it clear that while service has been a major influence in the recent evolution of libraries, it’s only a starting point for us, not the goal. Intensely good service should be a basic tenant of the library- it’s the 1.0 bedrock of all things 2.0. But it’s not going to make us special for long- evolution keeps happening.

Where do we go from service? The answer I keep hearing is “community.” The library is no longer a one-way information flow. We’ve ditched the “prostrate yourself at the desk and I will help you” attitude and we’re headed towards “hey, let’s all get smarter together.”

We’re not Starbucks or a Danny Meyer restaurant because we’re not selling food or a product or even service. The analogies start to break down because we’re not retail. On the ref grunt/library gripe communities online, I consistently see complaints about users who want the librarian to “do it for me” or who flaunt their technophobia. It’s a hot button not because we’re lazy, but because we aren’t making lattes, we’re growing communities. We want to help our patrons learn because we really do believe in the library as lifelong learning center, because most of us are lifelong learners. The library is evolving into a place where everyone learns together and librarians are no longer gatekeepers, but stewards who grow along with the rest of the library community.