In response to a number of recent queries about the availability of The New York Times for Duke users, we at the library would like to offer a quick rundown of what this access looks like. The New York Times is of course a ubiquitous resource for both newspaper readers and researchers alike, and so we strive to make it as available as possible. To that end, we subscribe to a myriad of databases that all contain some degree of New York Times access – last week’s post offered an overview of what this looks like. A drawback to this approach, however, is the fact that the levels of access vary from databases to database, and many ensure access to only a certain number of the Times’ numerous subsections. To mitigate this issue, we’re going to map out a clearer path to three of the most popular assets of the Times: The New York Times paper, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Times Book Review. These links are ideal for Duke users who wish to browse the Times (and this includes all of you nervously refreshing their election map every few minutes); in our next post, we’ll talk more about accessing the Times from a more research-oriented point-of-view.
The New York Times paper: If you’re a Duke undergraduate, the simplest way to browse the Times is to access The New York Times mobile app through the Duke Student Government Readership Program. Create a free account here using your NetID. Graduate students, faculty, and staff can also subscribe to the Times at a discounted rate. Beyond these options, Duke has access to the Times through a number of databases, the most user-friendly and intact being U.S. Newsstream, operated by ProQuest. Using this link, you have access to the full text of the Times from June 1st, 1980 to the present, including today’s paper. That said, the articles are isolated from each other and are only available in plaintext, so this option might be better suited for those with research interests.
The New York Times Magazine: Your safest bet for accessing The New York Times Magazine is to use U.S. Newsstream, which has access to the full text of the magazine from January 5th, 1997 to the present. Using this link, you can look at individual articles in similar way to the general Times, with one significant difference: where U.S. Newsstream only contains plaintext versions of Times articles, their Magazine access includes an option of viewing articles as PDFs, and these PDFs show the articles as they appear in the magazine proper. When you click on an article, it defaults to the plaintext version, but you can access this PDF version by clicking the tab labeled “Full text – PDF” at the top of the article. This setting is better for replicating the experience of browsing a magazine, although the articles, as with the newspaper articles, are isolated from one another – you have to access each of them individually (see below for the difference between the plaintext and PDF options).
The New York Times Book Review: Our recommendation for accessing the Book Review is much the same as the Magazine. Using this link, you can see that U.S. Newsstream has access to the full text of the Book Review from January 24th, 1988 to the present. The reviews, as with the magazine articles, have the option of being viewed as PDFs, and as with the magazine, we recommend taking that option to replicate the experience of browsing the publication itself.
Hi. Thanks for the great information, but unfortunately, the link to the current NY Times you listed doesn’t seem to give access to the paper. When I click on an article, even one within the last 7 days, it requires an account log in to access it. Is there a Duke institutional account we should use? Thanks
Hi John, thanks for your response. Can I ask what browser you are using? I’ve found that Chrome sometimes mistakenly flags the Duke proxy link (the seven day access link, https://www-nytimes-com.proxy.lib.duke.edu/) as unsafe, and when it does so, it gives you the option to either ignore this warning or to proceed to the official NYT site (nytimes.com). If you choose to proceed to the official site, you leave Duke’s access and are thus subject to the NYT’s paywall for any article you click on. If you choose to ignore the warning, as you should if you’re looking to access it via Duke, you’ll be prompted to enter your NetID, unless you’re already logged in. Following that, you should be able to access any article of the main paper if it’s seven days old or less.
If you have chosen to ignore the safety warning, or if you haven’t seen it at all, do let me know. As I say in the post, this level of access can be finicky, and rather unhelpfully, I’ve found that the NYT site doesn’t clearly indicate when you’ve gone past the limit of Duke’s seven-day access. I haven’t seen any prompts to log into an account when this happens–rather, the page usually just refuses to load for me–so I suggest you double-check the URL to see if you’re using the Duke proxy link. If you are, let me know and I will contact Duke OIT to see if I can get to the bottom of this. Apologies for any inconvenience caused by this!
I should also add that unfortunately, Duke doesn’t have an institutional account with the NYT at this time.
I am a Duke Alumni. Is there anyway that I can get a NetID given my status with Duke? Thank You for your consideration in this regard!
Hi Diane, thanks for your response. Unfortunately, Duke alumni are not eligible for an active NetID at this time. If by chance you are an educator or student elsewhere, I would suggest looking into the education discount I mention in the post (https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/education). Failing that, a number of organizations and corporations do have digital group subscriptions to the NYT; if you’re affiliated one, you could certainly get access that way. You can find out more about corporate digital subscriptions here (https://help.nytimes.com/hc/en-us/articles/115015883327-Corporate-digital-subscriptions) and general group subscriptions here (https://www.nytimes.com/subscription/groups).