Taking Things Slow: A Note from the Incoming Editor

Abstract

Several years ago, when I first heard about the “slow movement,” the cynic in me was immediately suspicious. However, as my colleagues discussed concepts like “rest is resistance” and friends shared memes and reels on social media promoting rest and an intentional slowdown in work to improve focus, I began to look more into it. As someone wired (some might argue, programmed) throughout my life to constantly be moving and busy, it felt unusual—even a little stressful—to pause and consider slowing down my work as a tenure-track academic librarian and department head. However, as I grew my department from two people to six, I realized that my team and I were trying to run even before learning to walk—we didn’t have a mission or vision for the department yet, and we lacked some important foundational processes, like transparent and clear workflows for assigning and tracking instruction sessions. Instead, I needed to take a moment to let my new hires settle in, learn their roles and how they wanted to organize and manage their individual time and processes, and then see how we all worked together as a team. And that was going to take time.