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Aside from the question of faculty finding academic slots after finishing their program, 

it should also be useful for doctoral students to understand what is the environment before they even begin and be also aware of.  It could also just be someone did not like your background say, as a librarian, and where "you come from" in terms of perspectives of how others may see "you" for a variety of reasons. 

I don't know if these are already on the bibliography, but they are some I have come across in the NY TImes and Inside Higher Education

It is also important to consider how the "old" academy is changing and may not be the 

same for todays doctoral candidates who are successful in getting past coursework.

 / Best, Karen W

Bousquet, Marc.   How the University Works:

Higher Education and the Low-Wage Nation

p. 31 

..."For graduate employees, the overwhelming consciousness of one’s

disposability all too frequently lends the aura of concreteness to the ideology

of “market.” But the erasure of graduate-employee labor knowledge

also takes the more active forms of direct suppression. In organizing

campaigns, the suppression of labor knowledge by administrations

can take the form of nonrenewal of the fellowships and assistantships of

organizers, as well as punitive recommendations by advisers—even, occasionally,

expulsion. It can take the form of illegal harassment, as Joel

Westheimer charged in the NLRB complaint he successfully settled with

NYU after being denied tenure at NYU subsequent to testifying in support

of graduate-employee unionists (Fogg). Most often, though, direct

suppression of labor knowledge by administrations and disciplinary institutions

takes the form of the kind of pervasive information warfare

conducted, for example, by MLA’s staff and executive council in response

to resolutions by the organization’s assembly in support of Yale

University’s GEU. In this instance, typical of the control that the staff

and officers of MLA sought to impose on the organization’s processes of

self-governance throughout the 1990s, organization staffers mailed out

a twelve-page propaganda leaflet attempting to shore up the administrative

position on the labor dispute (hoping, unsuccessfully, that the membership

would decline to ratify the measure). As Bérubé notes, this completely

one-sided document was circulated, without any sense of irony,

under the claim that it attempted to preserve “diversity of opinion” on

the question, and it became part of a continuing pattern by MLA officers

and staff of containing graduate-employee dissent (56–58).5"

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The wiki of the

Coalition of Graduate Employee Unions

(CGEU)

CGEU consists of labor unions and organizing drives in the United States and Canada that represent graduate and undergraduate students employed as teachers, tutors, researchers, and administrative staff. This wiki is for the Graduate Employee Movement. Its aim is to foster collaborative online organizing and information sharing.

"Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests." -- from Article 23, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

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"How to Be a Good Graduate Student"

Marie desJardins

March 1994

Abstract

"This paper attempts to raise some issues that are important for graduate students to be successful and to get as much out of the process as possible, and for advisors who wish to help their students be successful. The intent is not to provide prescriptive advice -- no formulas for finishing a thesis or twelve-step programs for becoming a better advisor are given -- but to raise awareness on both sides of the advisor-student relationship as to what the expectations are and should be for this relationship, what a graduate student should expect to accomplish, common problems, and where to go if the advisor is not forthcoming."

Introduction

"This article originated with a discussion I had with several women professors about the problems women face in graduate school, and how more women could be encouraged to go to graduate school in computer science. Eventually, the conversation turned to the question of what these women could do in their interactions with women students to support and encourage them. I volunteered that over the course of my graduate career I had collected a variety of papers and e-mail discussions about how to be a good advisor, how to get through graduate school, and issues facing women. They were eager to get this material, and I told them I would sort through it when I got a chance.

After mentioning this project to a number of people, both graduate students and faculty -- all of whom expressed an interest in anything I could give them -- I realized two things: first, the issues that we were talking about really were not just women's issues but were of interest to all graduate students, and to all caring advisors. Second, in order to disseminate the information I had collected (and was starting to collect from others) it seemed to make more sense to compile a bibliography, and write a paper that would summarize the most useful advice and suggestions I had collected."

"I solicited inputs from friends and colleagues via mailing lists and Internet bulletin boards, and collected almost an overwhelming amount of information. Sorting through it and attempting to distill the collective wisdom of dozens of articles and hundreds of e-mail messages has not been an easy task, but I hope that the results provide a useful resource for graduate students and advisors alike. The advice I give here is directed towards Ph.D. students in computer science and their advisors, since that is my background, but I believe that much of it applies to graduate students in other areas as well."

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also 

Mama PhD 

Karen Weaver, MLS, Adjunct Faculty, Cataloging & Classification, The iSchool at Drexel University, Philadelphia PA email: [log in to unmask] / Electronic Resources Statistician, Duquesne University, Gumberg Library, Pittsburgh PA email: [log in to unmask]