The information ecosystem concept in information literacy: A theoretical approach and definition

Despite the prominence of the concept of the information ecosystem (hereafter IE) in information literacy documents and literature, it is under‐theorized. This article proposes a general definition of IE for information literacy. After reviewing the current use of the IE concept in the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Framework for Information Literacy and other information literacy sources, existing definitions of IE and similar concepts (e.g., “evidence ecosystems”) will be examined from other fields. These will form the basis of the definition of IE proposed in the article for the field of information literacy: “all structures, entities, and agents related to the flow of semantic information relevant to a research domain, as well as the information itself.”