Page 253 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes
At Vanderbilt University, Office of Postdoctoral Affairs Program Coordinator Susan
McMillen says that they hold individual orientations with postdocs when they arrive,
which has helped to reduce the most common complaints about salary, benefits, and visas.
The orientations were originally done only for foreign postdocs, she said, but they found
that each situation was unique enough that it was worth doing them for everyone.
But the varied ways that postdocs are classified can leave them out in the cold on how to
deal with conflict at many institutions. For example, at the Medical College of Georgia, L.
D. Newman, who has a half-time appointment as the director of the 6-month-old Office of
Postdoctoral Affairs (the other half is as one of the college’s general counsels), says that
their postdocs are limited in where they can go to resolve conflicts because postdocs don’t
fit into any of the university’s three categories of people (students, faculty, and classified
employees).

So far Newman’s office has been able to resolve some disputes through the university’s
policies on research misconduct and conflict of interest, which covers scientific issues such
as authorship. “What we don’t have at present is a policy that would allow a postdoc to file
a grievance based on a human resources complaint,” such as salary or an abusive mentor,
Newman says. Right now, she says postdocs come to her and she acts as an advocate on
their behalf, but she’s in the process of drafting a new grievance procedure for postdocs.
At Stanford University, where postdocs are classified as students, they’ve been able to file
grievances under the procedure for students. But Stanford postdoctoral association (SUPD)
member Robert Busch notes that these procedures were meant to apply to academic matters
such as grades and really aren’t appropriate for the added workplace issues that postdocs
have. The association is also in the process of drafting a new grievance procedure that
would be more relevant to postdocs.
Still, disputes with your adviser can have a price. Although standing up to his adviser
“validated that what I thought on principle was true,” Rohit says the bridges are probably
now burned on their once cordial relationship. He probably would not have done so, he
says, had he not already left and been at a biotech company with no real possibility of
professional consequences.
And that’s a real consideration, says Daniel Zuckerman, former president of the Johns
Hopkins Postdoctoral Association (JHPDA). “To formally complain is essentially to burn
a bridge that may be the only one to the kind of job the postdoc wants,” he says. “It’s kind
of like family problems, once it gets outside the home, it’s a whole different ball of wax,”
agrees current JHPDA president Pauline Wong. Wong says she knows postdocs with
grievances who have left under the guise of, for example, having found another job. She
thinks that more oversight over the mentor/postdoc relationship is needed, and the
association is trying to implement yearly evaluations between the postdoc and mentor to
try and identify conflicts before they get out of hand.

Questions
1. Explain how the committee gave decision in favour of Rohit?
2. What do you infer from the case?
Source:http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2001_03_16/
nodoi.13497987501303093089

13.9 Summary

AACR2 covers main and added entries, “Choice of Access Points”.

248 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY