Application of social network analysis in interlibrary loan services

• Main Authors: Ammar Jalalimanesh, Seyyed Majid Yaghoubi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Webology Center 2013-06-01
• Series: Webology
• Subjects: Interlibrary loan; Information services; Document delivery; Document supply; Interlending; Social network analysis; Iran
• Online Access: http://www.webology.org/2013/v10n1/a108.html

This paper aims to analyze interlibrary load (ILL) services' network using Social Network Analysis (SNA) techniques in order to discover knowledge about information flow between institutions. Ten years (2000 to 2010) of logs of Ghadir, an Iranian national interlibrary loan service, were processed. A data warehouse was created containing data of about 61,000 users, 158,000 visits and 160,000 borrowed books from 240 institutions. Social network analysis was conducted on data using NodeXL software and network metrics were calculated using tnet software. The network graph showed that Tehran, the capital, is hub of Ghadir project and Qazvin, Tabriz and Isfahan have the highest amount of relationship with it. The network also showed that neighbor cities and provinces have the most interactions with each other. The network metrics imply the richness of collections of institutions in different subjects. This is the first study to analyze logs of Iranian national ILL service and is one of the first studies that use SNA techniques to study ILL services.