Some items that caught my attention on the internet this week;

• In the latest round of the HathiTrust court saga, an appeals court has mainly upheld an earlier decision and said, in the words of Jennifer Howard from Wired Campus,  “that HathiTrust’s creation of a searchable, full-text database of those works counts as fair use. So does making texts available in different formats for the vision-impaired and other users with disabilities that make it hard to use print”. Other coverage of this case (including lots of links) can be found at Info Docket, and a clearly written legal explanation of why this is a win for libraries comes from Kevin Smith of Scholarly Communications @ Duke.

• Summer is almost here and soon I’ll see my first lightening bug of the season. If you’re like me and delight in them every year, EurekaLab shared a cool citizen science project that might be just your thing. Researchers at Clemson University have developed an app (for iPhone and Android) and instructions (for kids and adults) to help them track and count the firefly population. Why not get the whole family involved in this summer science project?

• MIT Tech Review has a thought provoking story on how a scientist in California “well known in genetics circles as a conservative blogger who publishes provocative views on genetics, race, and reproduction” is now the father of the first healthy child born in the US with their genome fully decoded. As you can imagine, the piece also looks at the ethics of genetic testing of fetuses and questions on control of genetic data.