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  A Critical Annotated Bibliography of Obscure Scholarship on John Kennedy Toole and A Confederacy of Dunces. version 2.0

  H. Vernon Leighton

  The purpose of this bibliography is to summarize texts that might be difficult for the average scholar to obtain and to evaluate the quality of those obscure texts. Most of these are Master’s theses or Ph.D. dissertations that have at least some portion devoted to a discussion of John Kennedy Toole or the novel A Confederacy of Dunces. Most of the entries were written before 2014, though some were updated in 2025.

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  Ideas for Papers or Term Papers on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces, the Occasional Series, Final Version

  H. Vernon Leighton

  This document lists thirty-three ideas that the reader might use for the basis of a literary study of the novel A Confederacy of Dunces, or its author, John Kennedy Toole. Some ideas, such as the first few, are minor and might warrant a five-page undergraduate paper. Others, such as the final one, might warrant a peer-review article or a graduate thesis. These ideas were originally posted between 2010 and 2025 on the John Kennedy Toole Research blog by H. Vernon Leighton.

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  Uncovering Connections: CAQDAS and Tropy for Art Historians and Archaeologists

  Kayla C. Olson

  This article reports on a 2021 study that aimed to assess art historians’ and archaeologists’ familiarity with computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), so that academic librarians and visual resources professionals could begin to consider if access to and instruction on these tools might benefit their patrons in these disciplines. Initial findings from the study were presented at the Visual Resources Association 2022 Annual Conference. Scholarship concerning the information organization needs and practices of material culture researchers is limited but growing. Self-identified art historians, archaeologists, and object-based and material culture researchers were invited to take a survey disseminated through convenience and snowball sampling. Responses revealed a lack of participant knowledge about CAQDAS and mixed opinions about their utility. The participants’ research needs demonstrated that art historians and archaeologists interested in CAQDAS should be advised to use them for their original intended purpose: that is, as an analysis aid that helps discover patterns within medium-to-large, sometimes mixed media, datasets. CAQDAS should not be recommended as a replacement for standardized databases, and knowledge management applications like Tropy better fit the need for personal image management support. For patient and motivated researchers with digital experience, CAQDAS can be a powerful tool. For others who fare well with more traditional analog and digital methods of analysis and organization, the packages may cause more frustration than success due to substantial learning curves and financial cost.

  Published in Visual Resources Association Bulletin in 2022, v.49, no. 2 Fall/Winter

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  The 360 Librarian : A Framework for Integrating Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and Critical Reflection in the Workplace

  Carol A. Daul-Elhindi and Tammi M. Owens

  The 360 Librarian : A Framework for Integrating Mindfulness, Emotional Intelligence, and Critical Reflection in the Workplace is a book published by the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, 2020.

  "Whether you are just beginning your career or are a seasoned professional, navigating the academic library workplace comes with inherent challenges. You have to understand the official and unofficial mission of the library and the organization of which it is a part, maneuver within the political landscape, mesh with colleagues' personalities and roles, and learn how to do your job well. The 360 Librarian defines a framework for practicing librarianship with critical reflection, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence. It can help you become more purposeful in your daily interactions with students, faculty, and staff, and create pathways to authentic engagement. An engaged library practice consists of continual give-and-take, careful assessment of yourself and others, and full-circle situational awareness." American Library Association description

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  A Theory of Humor (Abridged) and the Comic Mechanisms of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces

  H. Vernon Leighton

  In order to examine the comedy of A Confederacy of Dunces (Confederacy) by John Kennedy Toole, I present a theory of humor (abridged), including some neuroscience. Within that framework, I examine Confederacy's comic mechanisms. The novel uses the comic devices of farce and concurrent incongruities to generate its humor. The overarching incongruity of the book is between how Ignatius Reilly sees himself and how he is portrayed. He sees himself as crusader and genius; he is shown to be coward and fool. Ignatius's primary personality trait is his selfish immaturity. He is both the trickster of the plot and one of the blocking characters who is tricked. Ignatius shares many qualities with physical comedians. Toole may have drawn on concepts of the trickster and fool available at the time he wrote the novel from thinkers in psychology, sociology, and historical studies, particularly the work of Enid Welsford.

  The book chapter "A Theory of Humor (Abridged) and the Comic Mechanisms of John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces" was published in the book Theology and Geometry: Essays on John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. The book was edited by Leslie Marsh. (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2020), pp 1-21. ISBN: 978-1498585477. No full text available through OpenRiver. Citation only.

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  Breaking the Glass Screens: A Case Study in Feminist Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons

  Kendall Larson and Stewart Van Cleve

  "Breaking the Glass Screens: A Case Study in Feminist Wikipedia Edit-a-Thons" was written by Kendall Larson and Stewart Van Cleve. The book chapter was published in the 2017 book titled: Gender Issues and the Library: Case Studies of Innovative Programs and Resources (McFarland & Company). The book was edited by Carol Smallwood and Lura Sandborn. ISBN: 9781476664736; No full text available through OpenRiver. Citation only.

  The publisher's book summary: "With the legalization of same-sex marriage and the explosion of LGBTQ news coverage, gender studies is a subject of interest in popular media and curriculum at colleges. Libraries realize the importance of supporting the field yet have difficulty finding resources and programming ideas. This book provides case studies and innovative solutions for better meeting patron needs."

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  Reference 360: A Holistic Approach to Reference Instruction

  Carol A. Daul-Elhindi and Tammi M. Owens

  "Reference 360: A Holistic Approach to Reference Instruction" is a chapter in the book Teaching Reference Today : New Directions, Novel Approaches. The book is edited by L. A. Ellis, Editor, (pp.98-117), Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.

  Publisher's description: "Reference and Information Services, if it may still be referred to by this term, is an evolving outreach service in libraries. This is not only due to Google and the Internet, but also other technological advances afford users online access to a plethora of content, free and proprietary. This evolution has also caused a shift in the theories and practices (especially, core functions and values) of reference and information services as library schools seek greater alignment with practitioners and libraries on the forefront of these changes.
  
  As academics and practitioners work together to educate library students on the kinds of changes happening in reference and information services, they are rethinking their curriculum and assignments to incorporate real-world challenges adaptive to user needs. Likewise, libraries may work through their regional library consortia to plan professional development workshops or training sessions to teach new skills and methods of approach required for such changing services.
  
  Here’s a tool for library school instructors, library students, professional development instructors, and current librarians poised to change, which specifically addresses the pedagogy of reference and information services in flux."

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  The Dialectic of American Humanism: the Lecture Script

  H. Vernon Leighton

  This document is the script from a lecture given at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota on March 28, 2012. The lecture described the scholarly discovery process for the peer-reviewed article “The Dialectic of American Humanism,” which was published in the journal Renascence also in 2012.

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  John Kennedy Toole's Papers: A Cautionary Tale of Scholarly Research.

  H. Vernon Leighton

  This document is the script from a Winona State University Library Athenaeum presentation by H. Vernon Leighton. The lecture was presented on March 17, 2010. In the Summer of 2009, Leighton visited Tulane University and studied the papers of John Kennedy Toole, the author of A Confederacy of Dunces. At the time of this lecture, he was working on an academic paper on this topic. The papers, about which no scholar has published a description at that time, established that at least two claims made in the scholarly literature on Toole were incorrect. The 16 December 2025 version of this text will be the final and authoritative version.

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  First 20 Precision among World Wide Web Search Services (Search Engines)

  H. Vernon Leighton and Jaideep Srivastava

  Five search engines, Alta Vista, Excite, Hotbot, Infoseek, and Lycos, are compared for precision on the first twenty results returned for fifteen queries. All searching was done from January 31 to March 12, 1997. Steps have been taken to ensure that bias has not unduly influence the evaluation. Friedmann's randomized block design is used to perform multiple comparisons for significance. Analysis shows that Alta Vista, Excite and Infoseek are the top three services, with their relative rank changing depending on how one interpreted the concept of "relevant."

  Citation:

  Leighton, H. Vernon and Jaideep Srivastava. "First 20 Precision among World Wide Web Search Services (Search Engines)." Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50 (July 19, 1999): 870-881. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-4571(1999)50:10< 870::AID-ASI4>3.0.CO;2-G

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  Performance of Four World Wide Web (WWW) Index Services: Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler and WWWWorm

  H. Vernon Leighton

  This document is the 1996 revised version of my first precision study of Web Search Engines. The study was done as part of a graduate course at the University of Minnesota in the spring of 1995 under Professor John Riedl. The first edition of this study was important: it was even used as evidence in a patent dispute trial among Silicon Valley corporations in subsequent years. According to Google Scholar (as of 17 December 2025), the revised version of this study has been cited 67 times in the scholarly literature. This revision was motivated by an emailed complaint by Steve Kirsch, who was the CEO of the Search Engine company Infoseek, over the initial version posted to the Web in 1995. The debate over protocols helped inform my more statistically valid precision study in 1997.