It’s ok to push back: Successes and challenges in implementing Slow for data services

Abstract

This chapter builds on previous efforts to integrate the Slow movement into curating research datasets for our respective institutional data repositories. However, even as Slow advocates, we’ve struggled to implement the practices consistently. As individuals in a larger, Busy system, it has been a challenge to practice Slow– but on a personal level, we also recognize that we love our work, which makes it easy to get caught up in the Busy. We’re stuck in tension and are constantly trying to avoid being pulled back into the Busy. In this chapter, we reflect on how our work has (or has not) changed during the past two years through an anti-racism lens. After providing contextual information on the state of data sharing from the perspective of data librarians in the US, we briefly summarize Slow Data Services concepts. Then, we move on to discuss our successes and ongoing challenges in implementing Slow. We share examples of how this effort to adopt Slow can and has impacted our work, colleagues, and personal lives. We end not with calls to action but calls for help– ways that we would like to be supported and in support of others looking to Slow their work.