“Slow Your Roll”: Making Time for Reflection and Diverse Epistemic Practices in Library Instruction

Abstract

As librarians consider ways to engage students in research, particularly those who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), it’s increasingly apparent that the transactional nature of the one-shot instructional model is inadequate for fostering thoughtful and critical discussions about information literacy and the scholarly publishing cycle. The one-shot also amplifies librarians’ attendant anxieties related to quantitative data collection and capitalistic work expectations. Additionally, socially constructed ideas around time, along with narrow epistemic perspectives that center Western thought, stanch librarians’ abilities to critically teach students about the research process. Incorporating autoethnography to exemplify the concepts discussed in the paper, the authors argue for a slow, relational approach that deprioritizes widget-like technical training in favor of student and librarian reflection, redresses epistemic injustices in scholarly research, and, most importantly, celebrates multiple epistemologies and expertise.