Many New York Times readers were disappointed when the Times took away free access to editorials and commentaries and converted this content into the subscription-only TimesSelect. Well those of us who attend and work at higher education institutions are getting a break from the Times. They recently announced that as of March 13 students and faculty with an “edu” email address would be eligible to get free access to TimesSelect. From the press release:
Beginning on March 13, subscriptions to TimesSelect will be available for free to all registered college students and faculty with a .edu in their e-mail addresses. TimesSelect is NYTimes.com’s paid offering that provides exclusive access to 22 columnists of The Times and the International Herald Tribune as well as an array of other services, including access to The Times’s archives, advance previews of various sections and tools for tracking and storing news and information. Current student subscribers will receive pro-rated refunds for their previously paid subscriptions. College students interested in registering for free TimesSelect subscriptions should go towww.nytimes.com/university for more information.
Since the registration form provides options for only students or faculty, this does leave some questions for the rest of us. Are computer services, library, writing center, and other institutional personnel eligible for the complimentary access to TimesSelect? What about alumni who may have an institutional email address from the .edu domain? So far there is no word from the Times on these matters, so for now it may be best to review the registration information when deciding how to proceed.
While having access to the current editorials and commentaries is a tremendous benefit to faculty and students, we recommend that when you need to search the archives of the New York Times you use the library’s version of the archive rather than the Times’ own version (now also being made freely available to faculty and students). The ProQuest Historical Newspaper database offers the full-text of the New York Times from 1851 through 2003. Not only is the search system more robust and functional than the Times’ own interface, but the ProQuest version offers more text, such as classified advertisements. In addition, the Times has placed limits on the number of documents that can be retrieved from the archive. There are no limits for Temple faculty and students when using the Library’s ProQuest Historical Newspaper database.
Just heard a podcast from the Economist magazine last night (originally from spring 06) on the topic of “New Media”. Discussed the disadvantages to mainstream publishers (NYT, Wall Street Journal, Economist, etc.) that limit free access to content on their site. While subscriptions do provide a revenue stream, it also shuts the publication out of much of the online conversation taking place in blogs.
In a fascinating move, NYT is now backing off providing all college students free access to Times Select. This was done after it was pointed out them, by academic librarians, that most college and university libraries have already paid thousands of dollars to deliver the full NYT archive to their students. So now only students at academic institutions that have already subscribed to the historic NYT through a library database can sign up for free access to Times Select.