Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Re-Conceptualizing Access: The New Role Of Information Literacy In Post-Secondary Education, Jennifer Andreae, Erin Anderson

Communications in Information Literacy

In this paper, we propose a new conceptual model of access in which information literacy plays a vital role in understanding and utilizing information to its fullest potential. The traditional approach, where access is equated to a static item (such as a computer lab or a list of links on a website), limits post-secondary students in their capacity to effectively navigate through the ever expanding plethora of information. Our new model, in which technological and information literacies are equally combined to form a true access outcome, offers a simple framework for post-secondary institutions to re-conceptualize access.