"Nor need OA even be limited to literature. It can apply to any digital content, from raw data to learning objects, music, images, and software. It can apply to works that are born digital or to older works, like public-domain literature and cultural-heritage objects, digitized later in life." (From Peter Suber's Open Access Overview) http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
Making the content of heritage collections free available in the world wide web is the best way to support scholarly research.
Libraries and archives should allow Open Access editions of works in their property. Seeing this property as a cultural property there is no place for permission barriers concerning reproductions.
On the taxpayer argument for OA see: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/09-04-03.htm
May be you are able without knowing German to understand the dramatic developments for university libraries resulting from the journal price crisis the Regensburg university library has shown with statistical graphs at http://www.bibliothek.uni-regensburg.de/allgem/krise/krise.htm Purchasing monographs in the humanities has been influenced by the increasing STM journal prices.
Klaus Graf