Hi, I'm Ryan.

I'm an instructional designer at Idaho State University, a Ph.D. student in English and the Teaching of English, and an academic journal editor.

Whether as a community college librarian, a rhetoric and composition instructor, or the other positions I've held, I help people understand complex ideas and systems, embrace curiosity, and explore alternatives.

A better world is possible, and I aim to help make it happen. If you're still curious, here's more about me.

Featured Sections

Blog
Somewhat regular posts.
ID Portfolio
Examples of my ID work.
Reading
What I'm reading.
Bookmarks
Annotated links.
Featured Pages
Other pages of note.
Colophon
How I make this site.
Notes
My digital garden.
Uses
I use & enthuse.

Featured Posts

Freire and Critical Librarianship

3 minute read

For Week One of the Critical Pedagogy MOOC MOOC, I write about Paulo Freire’s problem-posing method and its potential links to critical librarianship.

critlib #feelings

2 minute read

Why do I #critlib? Because another librarianship is possible.

Recent posts

Review of Online Archive of California

6 minute read

The Online Archive of California lies somewhere between a finding aid and a digital library—and is a huge boon to researchers that would be worth emulating elsewhere.

Bigfoot Spotting and Other Jekyll Adventures

2 minute read

A post where I describe trying—and thus far, failing—to use Bigfoot.js to make footnotes more engaging in a Jekyll/GitHub Pages blog. I’ll revisit this soon to give it another try.

New Directions in Information Fluency

less than 1 minute read

Brief reflections on a talk about bringing digital humanities to the reference desk, which I co-presented with Katherine Ahnberg at the New Directions in Information Fluency conference.

Test One

less than 1 minute read

Here’s a stellar ditty from Warp™ records that deserves being listened to with headphones or a subwoofer.

New Site

less than 1 minute read

A Depeche Mode reference is more interesting than Hello World, isn’t it?