A March 13, 2007 ARTstor press release brings news of an important development in the open access movement:

Excerpt:

"In a new initiative designed to assist scholars with teaching, study, and the publication of academic works, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will distribute, free of charge, high-resolution digital images from an expanding array of works in its renowned collection for use in academic publications. This new service, which is effective immediately, is available through ARTstor, a non-profit organization that makes art images available for educational use..."

The on-going crisis in Scholarly Communications is no longer breaking news. We all are aware of the sky-rocketing costs of journals, the imploding market for scholarly monographs, the struggles to develop sustainable business models for open access publications, and the paralysis induced by the lack of an agreed-upon process for peer review of born digital scholarship. In the face of this dismal situation, the folks at the The Institute for the Future of the Book and Rice University have been busily planning two new initiatives, both of which address head-on many of our shared problems.