It’s no secret that I am a fan of Professor Ronald Burt’s work. His book “Structural Holes: the Social Structure of Competition ”, is a seminal publication. Unfortunately I cannot say the same for “Brokerage and Closure ”, although I would still give it four stars. Read in sequence and in conjunction with each other they offer the knowledge management practitioner and network analyst some useful insights.

Once again Burt’s writing style is academic in flavour, with many examples. At times it is heavy going, but I still think well worth the effort. Burt remains interested in the structure of networks and particularly the links, or relationships, rather than node attributes. I think the focus on links rather than nodes is important. I just wish the software tools were better at showing link attributes, although I note NetMiner 3 is becoming more powerful in this area. One of the taken for granted but important assertions Burt makes is relationships amplify diversity and individual power, however in turn many diverse links enhance the power of relationships. ...

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About a month ago I read “Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another” by Doctor Philip Ball , who is a physicist by education and a science writer for Nature . I read it because of my interest in networks and complexity, and this book promised some insights. It was an entertaining read, but was hard going in a lot of places. Despite this the book was well written and flowed naturally.

I did enjoy the first chapter on Thomas Hobbes "Leviathan", probably because I like philosophy! The point of the chapter was that mankind has been trying to discover universal laws of society since at least 1651, and continues to do so. In subsequent chapters at times I was disappointed and found myself saying “So what!” or “Where is the evidence?” – cause and effect where not always clear to me. ...

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Pajek means spider in Slovenian. Pajek is also a software program for the analysis and visualisation of very large networks; networks with thousands if not millions of vertices. It is a program I use occasionally, however I prefer UCINET and NetMiner 3 , because I find these programs to be easier to use. It is precisely for this reason I bought and read “Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek ” by Wouter de Nooy, Andrej Mrvar, and Vladimir Batagelj.

The book is an easy read and nicely complements the manual – in fact I think it could easily replace the manual. I learnt that Pajek is actually quite a bite easier to use than I first thought. Having played around with Pajek after reading the book I found I could manipulate my datasets in new ways. That said I am not a convert to Pajek - it's still too clunky for my liking. ...

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I've just finished reading Methodological Pitfalls in Social Network Analysis by Nicholas Marschall. The central theme is that current methods produce questionable results, which is precisely why I read the book.

Running to 86 pages the book is an easy one-sitting read. For what it is it's also expensive. The book is a translation from German so in some places the English is - well unusual. Looking beyond this small problem, it appears to be a student or scientist research justification, or perhaps a short synopsis of a PhD, which means the style is very academic, but it is interesting!

Marschall quite rightly says data collection approaches colour results, and are full of implicit assumptions. He comes to the conclusion that size reduction and transformation processes, which are quite common in published studies, can significantly change the results of an analysis. ...

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I’ve just finished reading “Net Work: A Practical Guide to Creating and Sustaining Networks at Work and in the World” by Patti Anklam , who is a recognised practitioner in network analysis circles. The central theme is we work through informal and formal networks, which may be tangible or intangible, but all have value. Her primary assumption is that all networks can be mapped. These maps serve to describe the network and provide a diagnosis of the health of the mapped entity, albeit the map is a snapshot in time. Patti’s premise is if the network can be mapped and described then the network can be managed and weaved – a premise I largely agree with, and which is an underlying assumption in my research .

"Net Work” has a five-star rating on the Amazon site and other book sites. Personally I would give it three and a half stars, as in some areas I think it a bit shallow. For example, it purports to be a practical guide but there are few examples of questions and even fewer how to examples. I also think the absence of a chapter on network measures and metrics is a major deficiency. ...

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