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? Continue reading →

In this edition of Blog Buzz;

NPR’s Shots reports on the recent Nature commentary piece from Janine Clayton, Director of the US Office of Research on Women’s Health and NIH Director Francis Collins, discussing NIH plans toward development of policies to “balance sex in cell and animal studies“.

In Reservatrol Redux, Or: Should I just Stop Writing about Health? a post examining the disconnect between the slowly unfolding scientific process, regular media coverage of new frequently contradictory studies, and they way everyday consumers read health pieces, Virginia Hughes raises some tough questions for health journalists. I think these questions are also relevant to scientists and who folks communicate to the public about new science, and fight for scientific funding. Consider this quote from the post; Continue reading →