Information Literacy and Community College Students: Using New Approaches to Literacy Theory to Produce Equity

Abstract

Librarians in community colleges have engaged in information literacy (IL) for decades, but their theorizing of IL has never taken equity as a starting point. This article asserts that IL theory radiating from equity requires the animating dynamics that conceptual advances in literacy theory offer. By examining early moments in librarianship to understand librarians’ relationship to equity and drawing on Jean‐Luc Nancy’s contrasting notions of globalisation (globalization, resulting in misery) and mondialisation (world forming, resulting in a just society) as a framework for reenvisioning IL, I identify new approaches to IL that are particularly well suited to producing more equitable educational outcomes for community college students. Synthesizing concepts from researchers who have applied new thinking about literacy to their conceptualizations about information literacy, I celebrate approaches to IL in which students, critically engaged in creating meaning, are positioned as producers of information.