New Strategic Alliance: Artstor Will Now Function as Part of ITHAKA, Joining JSTOR, Portico and ITHAKA S+R

UPDATE: Full Text of Letter Sent to Members of Artstor Community
From Today’s Announcement:

Artstor, the provider of the Artstor Digital Library of images and the Shared Shelf platform for cataloguing and digital asset management, will now function under the umbrella of ITHAKA, which currently operates the services JSTOR, Portico and Ithaka S+R.
Artstor, JSTOR and ITHAKA were all created as mission-driven nonprofit organizations with initial support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—a history reflected in the co-operation that has existed to date between Artstor and JSTOR in working to build and preserve shared academic resources. Now, with both operating under the ITHAKA umbrella, Artstor and JSTOR will be better able to collaborate in developing new tools and in taking advantage of core capabilities.
[Our emphasis] Under the new alliance, Artstor will retain its identity as a 501(c)(3) organization, with management and financial responsibility assumed by ITHAKA. Artstor’s extensive network of relationships and terms will remain in place, and its existing products and services will continue to be made available for current and new subscribers.
Kevin Guthrie said, “The heart of ITHAKA’s mission is to use new technologies to strengthen the work of educational institutions while lowering their costs. Bringing Artstor alongside ITHAKA’s services will enable us to provide important new solutions to our community, and to do so at a lower cost than would otherwise have been possible.”
James Shulman said, “This alliance will allow us to bring together deeply complementary efforts: Artstor has supported the visual, where JSTOR has emphasized textual materials. Artstor has supported teaching and learning primarily, while JSTOR has been an indispensable part of research. Together, working under ITHAKA, we will now have exciting opportunities for combining our capabilities, particularly in advancing the networked flow of content, so primary and secondary source material can be discovered, contextualized and advanced in ways that further empower researchers, teachers and students.”

Read the Complete Announcement

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