The Open Laboratory

In a sense, turning blog posts into a book - a blook - misses the point, which is that blogs are living, interactive things. Equally, if blog postings can thrive in that form, who am I to gainsay the move?

Certainly, I wish the splendidly-named The Open Laboratory (available from Lulu.com) every success. It's " a collection of 50 selected blog posts showcasing the quality and diversity of writing on science blogs".

Science blogs are, indeed, some of the most readable around, probably because their subject-matter tends to be more substantial than the usual fluff you find in the medium (and I speak as someone who has produced a fair amount of fluff in his time.) It's also probably significant that the ScienceBlogs site is one of the more successful attempts to unify and consolidate related blogs.

Of course, you can still read the posts online (or the longer list of suggestions for inclusion), which makes the collection thoroughly OA. (Via Open Reading Frame.)