In SQL Server 2005 you can prevent read locks from blocking other users by running this command:
ALTER
DATABASE <database name> SET READ_COMMITTED_SNAPSHOT ON-
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Darren Myher's Blog 
This same command works in SQL 2008 by the way, and can make a dramatic performance improvement especially when dealing with Microsoft Access databases bound to SQL Server data sources.
What this does is allow Access’s paging behaviour to not block reads or writes to the table. So even if you have high ASYNC WAIT IO running this command stops them from blocking other users or even the same user from retrieving data from the database.