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This resource guide is meant to help people at all levels explore the subject. When a paper falls into more than one category, we have linked to it in both categories. This is not an exhaustive list but, hopefully, will be a valuable resource to help you learn more about social networks.

Getting Started

These are references to books, articles and papers that are related to social networks, but not specifically part of the field.

Business

SNA has been applied to helping organizations work better, but understanding social networks goes beyond that. It is useful for thinking about markets, teams, leadership and even product development.

By Author

Many researchers give us access to their work on-line. This allows access to many great papers on SNA linked through their authors.

 

Harvard Department of Social Relations

In 1949 sociologist Talcott Parsons started a new department at Harvard called the Department of Social Relations which included sociology, psychology and anthropology. In 1963 Harrison White taught a core course: Introduction to Social Relations 10, or SocRel10. These are comprehensive notes take by Michael Schwartz on the course and notes provided by White to his students on catnets (category nets). This is probably the most comprehensive description of catnets.

 

Innovation

The social network view of innovation is that ideas are borrowed from one social world into another.

Institutions

Institutions could be organizations, or they could be social scripts like shaking hands.

Method and Theory

Much of the method of SNA has theory behind it and vica versa. There are a number of fine resources that treat the two together.

On-line social networks

This is research and related information about "social networking" Web sites, "social networking" and collaborative software.

Regions

Organizations, cities, countries and more can be nodes in a network. This section has studies in that area.

One way to answer the question "how are networks created" is by simulating them. This section is

Related

This section has papers that are related to social networks.

Social Capital

It is often said that there is financial capital, human capital and social capital. There is not 100% agreement on what social capital is. This section links to resources so that you can gain insight on this issue.

Social Network Organizations

This is a list of organizations that study or otherwise work with social networks.

 

Society and Networks

Not only do networks provide a way of talking about, understanding and influencing our increasingly connected world, they provide insight into problems like inequality and conflict.

Software

This is various software packages that can be used to analyze social networks.

Theory

Besides the theories of why a specific technique works, there is also broader theory of network models, included in this is the "relational viewpoint."

Is your book, paper, Web site or organization missing from this list or we missing something important? Don't get mad, help us out and send the information to: Donald Steiny . Please tell us which category you would like it to be in. Also, if it does not appear right away, feel free to remind us (nicely), it is always possible e-mail can get lost or we just plain forget. Thanks.