Gov. Schwarzenegger Launches First-in-Nation Initiative to Develop Free Digital Textbooks for High School Students, press release, May 6, 2009.

The Institute for Advanced Study Berlin and the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge.

Gideon Burton, Galileo opened the heavens with Open Access, Academic Evolution, May 20, 2009.

James Love, Hillary and Obama Set to Kill Medical R&D Treaty at WHO Meeting, Huffington Post , May 20, 2009. PS:  For background see the draft treaty from February 2005 and our past posts on it.

PhysMath Central has posted a presentation introducing the project, presented at an undated INSPIRE meeting in Batavia, Ill.

The DRIVER project has posted a 3-minute video intro to the repository project.

QUT ePrints Update – HERDC & stats, LibraryFIT, May 21, 2009. See also some of our past posts on repositories for research reporting (e.g. 1, 2, 3).

The presentations from Open Knowledge Conference 2009 (London, March 28, 2009) are now online.

RepoChallenge Winners!, dev8D, May 20, 2009.

Aneesh Chopra, U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee to be the country's first Chief Technology Officer, was confirmed by the Senate yesterday. For background, see also our post on Chopra's nomination.

Data.gov, an OA warehouse of datasets created by the U.S. federal government, launched yesterday. See, e.g., coverage by the Washington Post. Also yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new contest for best re-use of data from Data.gov, Apps for America 2. First prize is $10,000. See also our past posts on Data.gov.