How to serve people's information requirement with no advanced library reference service?

I conducted a survey named "Ask a librarian or ask Google" for a course assignment. Only 32 people took the survey and most of them were LIS students with the awareness of importance of library reference service. Most of the survey takers agreed that the library reference service could not be replaced by online information resources because of only reference service could offer quality information, research guidance and human interactions.(The survey is still open and anticipating your participation! Current survey summary can be found here.)

After the group presentation last Thursday, a classmate asked me to introduce library reference service in China and what I said was: "There is almost no library reference service in China. They do exist but nobody knows that they have "reference service". Libraries in China is more resource-oriented rather than service-oriented."
The question drove my attention to the issue "How to serve people's information requirement with no advanced library reference service?"

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The survey responses makes me more confirmed of the importance of reference librarians. And I'd like to share with you some of the responses here:

1. I had a bad experience with the 24 hour ask a librarian service featured on the SU library web page. When the librarian could not find the information I needed in a few minutes he told me he couldn't help and signed off. I feel a librarian would not have sent me away as quickly if we were meeting in person.

2. No one has bothered to scan the hundreds of pages of British Parliamentary Debates from 1879. It's almost as though they don't even care about Michael Davitt and the Irish Land Rebellion! My point is there will always be some severely esoteric information that is only available in person, in print, and in a library.

I'm so used to academic libraries with database access and I don't always have difficulty in searching for information. 2 monthes in US and all the assighments I had and going to have make me eager to learn more about the field and I really have the kind of feeling that I don't know where to start. Take a simple example, in the past month, the "First Amendment" has been mentioned for many times in different situations and I want to learn more about it. I look up in web pages, FirstAmendment Center and Findlaw-FirstAmendment , each provides tons of documents to read. Who can tell me where to start?

Here, the answer is simple, ask a reference librarian, especially a law reference librarian. But what about the rest of the world? Can they find some guidance when facing tons of documents? Or, how can we improve that? Can we offer quality information and quality research guidance online or establish and develop reference service in libraries? Take this into consideration: there is only two public libraries in my hometown, one for general public and one for children, and the city population is more than 8 million people.

The task is hard and there are so many factors need to be considered, e.g., financial resources, people's viewpoints(including the public and the librarians), government policy. However, it is challenging and deserves further exploration.