Fighting Information Overload

There's a small article in the June 2013 edition of School Library Journal that talks about the current value of librarians not being in providing exhaustive services, but in providing selective information services. The four points the author makes are:

1. Weed the collection and pick the best. Then get to know all about it so you can use it well.
2. "Concretize" [not a real word] the resources. Best is to teach it in the moment, but if the moment if after hours (or whatever), then use products like CamStudio to make quick screen captures to teach it.
3. Categorize large groups of items into smaller, more specific groups. This way the user doesn't have to guess what a database does.
4. Start simple by introducing smaller sets of things and then progress to larger sets. Once the user has a handle on a topic, you can give more information.

As a customer, this is a no brainer. I prefer to shop at Trader Joe's because there aren't a million things to choose from and what they do have is great quality for the price. TJ's has done my work for me.

As a librarian, this is a little harder b/c I want to find everything. I don't know if what I have found will meet the need, so I want to send the user home with everything. I suppose to better serve the user I need to spend more time learning about his/her info need, spend more time in the reference interview.