Social Network Analysis: Insights Generated!
I analyzed the Monroe County Library System (MCLS) website using Social Networking Analysis tools. While some of the results of my analysis were expected other results came as a surprise. As I worked through my analysis using the Social Network Analysis tool (NodeXL), I was interested in two results in particular: first, three of the hyperlinks that appeared as vertices on my graph and second, the existence of a structural hole in my final graph.
The initial crawl of the MCLS website listed eighteen vertices including the MCLS site. Many of the hyperlinks were familiar to me such as the MCLS OPAC and community calendar. Other hyperlinks were not immediately familiar but still made sense as they linked to local genealogy sites and other local information. Three of the identified hyperlinks had no obvious connections to the MCLS site.
Upon further investigation, these sites turned out to be social media sites; specifically a blog maintained by a librarian at MCLS, a social network page belonging to a Monroe County citizen, and a bookmarking site that included hyperlinks for library services including some to MCLS's site. Most interesting was when I ran the second data analysis adding all eighteen vertices as seed sites and ran the graph metrics in NodeXL. The bookmarking site had the highest degree (network activity for a particular node is described by using the concept of degrees which is the number of direct connections a node has) at 409 which was more than 4 times the second highest degree entry of 97. After subsequent filtering and removal from the graph of vertices with degrees of less than two, the bookmarking site was 'hardly a blip' on the final graph as most of the vertices it had connected to had a degree of less than two.
The existence of a structural hole on the final graph also caught my attention. A single vertex sat by itself on the left side of the graph with no edges to make connections. I used the various feature of NodeXL to set the vertex tooltip as the vertex name to easily identity which hyperlink this vertex belonged to. This was a link to a local forecast page on the Weather Channel website. The structural hole in this graph indicated that the vertices that connected the MCLS site with this Weather Channel site had a degree of less than two and were therefore removed from the graph.
I really enjoyed this analysis of the MCLS website using the VOSON data provider. It gave me a greater understanding of how useful Social Networking Analysis using the NodeXL tool could be for organizations wishing to analyze their websites. I think that this is a skill that librarians should possess.
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