The NYTimes new Times Select service requires a fee for online access to op-eds, editorials and other online content. Home delivery subscribers get access to this content for free. Of course, I live far enough away that home delivery is not an option for me. So I inquired to see if I were a librarian, at a small library, [which I sort of am] if my patrons could use Times Select via my subscription. Answer: no. The same is true if you are a student at a university and get it delivered to your dorm. Of course librarians know that you can get access to the “select” content via Lexis Nexis anyhow, right? Princeton is at least one library lobbying the New York Times to allow some sort of access to content for Institutional subscribers. Perhaps your library should be another?
[Princeton’s] Firestone Library has already contacted the newspaper to determine if institutional access rates might be established for the Princeton campus, said Kevin Barry, head of the Social Science Reference Center.
“It is our intention to lobby hard for an educational institution arrangement,” he said. “I expect that our concern over how TimesSelect restrictions have upset daily patterns of reading key features and opinion pieces is shared by most academic libraries. I hope that those of us who represent the library and its community can prevail successfully upon The New York Times to find a way of opening up the website fully to institutional subscribers.”
