Librarianship and Documentation of Internet Social Networks (1): Introduction

Earlier this year, we noted that during the same of what would be spoken on the Web would be on the Social Networks. For those unfamiliar with the concept, the purpose of these sites would use the reach of the Internet to facilitate expanding the circle of contacts of its users and to share interests, of whatever nature, with a large number of people without any physical limitations or temporary. Social networks are based on the theory of six degrees of separation, whereby any person on the planet is connected to another by just six steps between people who know.

Within the group of Library and Information Science, this year have been presented and performed a multitude of courses to try to offer guidance to professionals about Web 2.0 and what is moving inside her. One of the mandatory headings in these courses necessarily meant social networks, so I decided to take a look at the degree of penetration that such sites have within the profession.

Social Networks and data mining: Initial Barriers

One of the main barriers when conducting a study of these features is, on the one hand, privacy and, second, the number of profiles that are complete within them. Thus, in the first case, we find that the website does not allow us access to a specific profile if the person we see we have accepted as "friend". The concept of "friend" is very easy to explain, social networks are trying to show the social relations that keeps a person in the real world. When a person meets another, it invites another to join their social network as a "friend", obviously the two people must agree to accept and by the invitation, because otherwise the possibility of access to a particular profile is not exists. In any case, there are also social networks that create a public profile, with data that the user controls and you want to display, so that a search profile and search much easier.

Another problem in obtaining the relevant information when addressing the database is that users do not completely fill out cards with their profiles. Often, much more professional social networks, the system asks us to fill in a form with our education, occupation and workplace, although this is not a sine qua non for beginning to interact with the system and get to work with he. This fact, lack of data within the chips, degrades our results while hiding the number of people who are dedicated to a particular task.

In addition, we may find that six degrees of separation are not sufficient. Depending on the Social Network that we consult, we can perform a search equation over the entire database are available or only a percentage of it. For example, LinkedIn can only see up to six degrees of separation within the network to which we belong, so obviously we will suffer a bias in obtaining the data and profiles.

Finally, we must also bear in mind the language. While current Social Networking sites have been updated, previously available only in English and were used intensively by the Anglo community. This led, in large measure on social networking professionals, early-adopters that whites do not use the system in its original language, ie English, discarding the possibility of doing so in Castilian because, after all, Business is Business.

Our little test on LinkedIn, Facebook and Xing

In the absence of a specific Social Network for information professionals, we have focused on two of the most popular where we could extract data with little difficulty: LinkedIn, Xing and Facebook. Data were extracted on 21 October 2008 using my profile on all networks. LinkedIn is a social network focused on the generation of professional contacts established in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, currently have 3 traffic 2 million visitors a month with 24 million registered users. Furthermore, Facebook, the best known and popular with surfers, began as a site whose user targeting the U.S. college students and later expand its audience to the rest of the population. Currently has 100 million registered users and one of its characteristics is the development of third party applications that will expand its interaction possibilities. Finally, Xing acquired eConozco Social Network that was a Social Network for Spain's largest professional. There are more than 6 million people released.

The consultations were conducted in Castilian focusing on developmental aspects of the profession and study only. I will conduct a preliminary vocabulary control, ie I will not seek new definitions of the term infonomista profession, or new areas of interest the same as surveillance technology, performing a first go without being retail or accurate. In fact, this is only a first approach to the use of Social Networking for professionals in the Library and Information Science. Moreover, we must also take into account the specific characteristics of each of the databases, so that the fields and forms to see may differ from one another.

More information:

1. Librarianship and Documentation of Internet Social Networks (1): Introduction
2. Librarianship and Documentation of Internet Social Networks (2): Facebook
3. Librarianship and Documentation of Internet Social Networks (3): LinkedIn
4. Librarianship and Documentation of Internet Social Networks (4): Xing
5. The Library and Information Science in the Social Networks of the Internet (and 5): Conclusions