New York Times access now free for HarvardKey holders through Harvard Library

What better way to share knowledge than to give the Harvard community all the news that’s fit to print?

Thanks to a new agreement between the New York Times and Harvard Library, all HarvardKey holders are now able to activate a free New York Times digital subscription. The Harvard-sponsored subscription includes access to a personal nytimes.com account with full digital access; articles from 1851 to the present from print and digital editions of the Times; and past and current digital content, including videos, podcasts, and interactive media. The subscription is available as of June 1 to current Harvard students, faculty, and staff.

The agreement was negotiated with the New York Times by a group of staff from across Harvard Library, overseen by Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources Elizabeth Kirk.

Kirk said she and her colleagues see the Times as “an essential resource, especially for our undergraduate students, for understanding how events are perceived in the moment and how history begins to be written.”

“The New York Times is considered by many to be the Unites States’ most consequential news organization, and it has a long record of breaking major stories and bringing news of critical importance to the public’s attention,” Kirk said. “The immediacy of reporting is often coupled with deep analysis that offers important insight into our society, our government, and the world at large.”

She credited the Harvard Library E-Resources Unit and Shared Harvard E-Resources (SHAER) working group for negotiating the agreement with the Times, and various libraries across Harvard for sponsoring the subscription.

“We are very glad to be able to bring the Times to the Harvard community,” Kirk said.

As of June 1, current Harvard students, faculty, and staff should be able to sign up for an account through Harvard’s registration page. Kirk said users are encouraged to use their school-affiliated email to create a personal account. Students who sign up will have subscription access through their graduation year, while faculty and staff will have access through the current four-year agreement term.

Harvard Business School, Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Law School, and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health already offered New York Times digital subscription access. Users from these schools will need to re-activate their accounts and should have received a message from the Times on June 1 with instructions on how to do so. For more information about that process, contact the Harvard Library E-Resources Unit.

The New York Times is the newest addition to a list of subscription content available to HarvardKey holders through Harvard Library. Beyond numerous databases, academic journals, the library provides access to free Washington Post and Wall Street Journal subscriptions. To automatically have access to content behind a paywall when Harvard Library has a subscription, install the Lean Library browser extension.