Biosketch: Dr. Cecilia Gärdén

Cecilia Gärdén is a senior lecturer at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science, University of Borås. Cecilia's research and teaching are mainly focused on information seeking, information literacy and learning in school and in library practice.

Current research activities/projects

Cecilia is currently involved in a research project about school library research in collaboration with the National Library in Sweden. She is also writing about students’ information seeking on the Internet in the school context, at the request of The National Agency for Education in Sweden.

Cecilia has been the project leader of several evaluation projects, focusing on learning and information sharing in public library organizations. She was also part of the research project Equestrians and social media: Safety in rider communities in Sweden which aims to further the knowledge of how safety is discussed and understood in social media by riders.

Cecilia's dissertation (2010) is focused on information seeking practices in educational contexts, especially the interaction between information seeking and learning. From a socio cultural perspective, the thesis explores 1) how adult students, teachers and librarians interact in information seeking and use in the practice of working with a complex school assignment, 2) what tools and scaffolds are used, and why, 3) how information is used by adult students to construct knowledge and make sense, and 4) what elements of information literacy emerge in the interaction around the assignment. To answer the research questions, a qualitative case study was conducted.

A few recent publications

Gärdén, C. (forthcoming). Information literacy in the tension between school’s discursive practice and students’ self-directed learning. Information Research.

Nowé Hedvall, K, Gärdén, C., Byström, K, Michnik, Ahlryd, S., Carlén, U. (forthcoming). Social media in serious leisure: themes of horse rider safety. Information Research.

Gärdén, C & Utter, M. (2016). Informationssökning på internet [Information Seeking on the Internet]. Lärportalen, Digitalisering – grundskola, gymnasieskola, modul: Kritisk användning av nätet. Stockholm: Skolverket. https://larportalen.skolverket.se/#/modul/digitalisering/Grundskola/Shortcut%20To%20200_Kritisk_anvandning_av_natet/del_01/
Gärdén, C., Francke, H., Lundh, A.H. & Limberg

Gärdén, C., Francke, H., Lundh, A.H. & Limberg, L. (2014). A matter of facts? Linguistic tools in the context of information seeking and use in schools. In Proceedings of ISIC, the Information Behaviour Conference, Leeds, 2-5 September, 2014: Part 1, (paper isic07). http://InformationR.net/ir/19-4/isic/isic07.html.

Gärdén, C. & Nowé Hedvall, K. (2014). Lärande i biblioteket. Utvärdering av KUB-projektet. Karlstad. Region Värmland. https://kubprojektet.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/utvc3a4rdering-av-kub-projektet.pdf

Gärdén, C. (2014). Vuxenstuderande och informationskompetens. I: O. Sundin & J. Rivano Eckerdal (red.) MIK och biblioteken: en forskningsantologi. Stockholm: Svensk biblioteksförening. S. 63-75.