One of the foundational studies of social network analysis produced a depiction of scientific collaboration by tracing a network of scientific papers linked by co-authorships and co-citations, which has since spurred numerous studies on the typology, organization and dynamics of scientific research networks. This paper introduces social network analysis and its analytical measures of network structure. It then demonstrates the utility of social network analysis in forestry, in the evaluation of large research networks such as the Sustainable Forest Management Network (SFMN), and suggests other important uses of network visualization to facilitate exploring, discovering and selecting resources in a database.