A multi-dimensional interface for visualizing bibliographic networks from Zotero libraries. GlassCast reveals the structure of citation relationships through three complementary perspectives on the same network data.
Based on GlassCast v.1 (Peña & Dobson, 2015)
Like a cast sculpture where the subject appears as negative space within glass, GlassCast reveals the intellectual landscape through the relationships between documents. Each view illuminates different aspects of this space: structural clustering, temporal evolution, and chronological flow.
1. Load Your Data: Drag and drop your Zotero HTML report into the drop zone, or click to browse files. Generate a report from Zotero using File → Export Library → Report (HTML).
2. Explore Sample Data: Click ⚡ to load a sample dataset of 30 documents from visual literacy and glitch art scholarship (1964-2020).
⊚ Network View - Reveals structural relationships through force-directed layout. Documents cluster based on citation patterns, showing communities of related work. High-degree nodes (large circles) indicate influential or well-connected texts.
⧗ Temporal View - Organizes documents along a vertical timeline by publication date. The cylindrical projection allows rotation (use ← → arrow keys) to explore the temporal network from different angles. Month-level jitter prevents overlap of documents from the same year.
≋ Sankey Timeline - Shows citation flow across decades as horizontal bar charts. Each column represents a decade; bar length indicates connection count. Arcing paths within decades and flowing paths between decades reveal patterns of influence over time.
Navigation:
↻ button returns to default viewSelection & Filtering:
+ button to include 2nd-order connections, 3rd-order, etc.− button to return to direct connections only✕ button removes all selections and highlightsDisplay Options:
Aa button shows/hides document titles across all viewsNode Colors:
Node Size: In Network and Temporal views, larger circles indicate documents with more connections (5-25px radius based on degree).
Sankey Bars: Each horizontal bar's length (width) represents the number of connections that document has (1px per connection). Taller stacks indicate more publications in that decade.
The connections (edges) between documents are derived from Zotero's "Related" field. In your Zotero library, you can manually relate documents to each other (right-click a document → Add Related). GlassCast visualizes these relationships as a network, allowing you to see how documents cluster and influence each other across your research corpus.
If your Zotero library uses manual tags with prefix notation (A., B., C., etc.), GlassCast organizes them into collapsible categories. Click category headers to expand/collapse, then click individual tags to highlight all documents in that category across all views.
Aa) when examining dense regions, show them for identification