ABSTRACT
Multiliteracies suggest a splintering of literacy into discrete parts that belie the true nature of literacy as a complex and intersecting set of social actions. Multiliteracy practices insinuate a need for a range of modalities that seem to be compatible with Gardner's work in incorporating a wider range of learning modalities in the classroom. The key to understanding the changing landscape of contemporary literacy is to study the areas where the rationale, skill sets, and purposes of various literacies converge and overlap for clues to the common features, competencies, and pedagogies of literacy at this point in time. Librarian Lawrence J. McCrank addressed the problematic process of establishing definitions for emerging concepts in an essay about the historical significance of library competencies defined as information literacy. The discussion of multiliteracies that center on the use of communication technologies provides some focus to examine the relationship between traditional notions of literacy and multiliteracies.
