UIC Library Faculty Profile: Carl Lehnen: Home

I got interested in librarianship while completing a dissertation on 19th-century British literature. Before coming to UIC in May 2016, I worked in a variety of library settings, including a large research university, a community college, and a small liberal arts college. After 10+ years in teaching and public services, I started a position as Collections Management Librarian in 2022.

My research agenda is premised on two ideas: that sociocultural and disciplinary contexts affect how people seek out and make sense of information, and that a rich understanding of the interaction between context and information behavior can help libraries to better support and connect with students and faculty. In several qualitative research studies, I have looked at what research practices of literature faculty can tell us about information literacy pedagogy, the needs of graduate students on their journey to becoming independent researchers, the teaching practices of librarians, and the role of subject databases in accessing scholarly literature in a discipline.

Lehnen, C.A., and Insua, G.M. (2022). Search tools and scholarly citation practices in literary studies. Reference Services Review. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-07-2022-0025

Lehnen, C.A. (2021). Skills, support networks, and socialization: Needs of dissertating graduate students. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102430

Johnson-Barlow, E.M., and Lehnen, C.A. (2021). A scoping review of the application of systematic instructional design and instructional design models by academic librarians. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 47(5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2021.102382

Lehnen, C.A., and Insua, G.M. (2021). Browsing, networking, contextualizing: Research practices of humanists and implications for library instruction. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 21(2), 275-297. https://doi.org/10.1353/pla.2021.0016

Lehnen, C.A., and Artemchik, T. (2018). Survey of modern language research guides: A window on disciplinary information literacy. Reference Services Review, 46(3), 463-478. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-06-2018-0055