The Evolution of the Personal Networks of Novice Librarian Researchers

This article describes for the first time the composition and structure of the personal networks of novice librarian researchers. We used social network analysis to observe if participating in the Institute for Research Design in Librarianship (IRDL) affected the development of the librarians’ personal networks and how the networks changed over the course of one year. Four times during the year, we used EgoWeb 2.0, open-source software for social network analysis, to gather the data used in the study. We found that the size of the research networks of the participants dramatically increased after the IRDL summer workshop and continued to evolve over the yearlong program.