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How do I search the New York Times website and TimesMachine?

Discover some tips for finding articles on specific topics.

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Search the website

Step 1:

Register for a free New York Times account. 
 

Step 2:

Go to the New York Times website, and login using the button in the top right corner.  
 

Step 3:

Click the search icon in the top left corner.  
Search icon
 

Step 4:

Enter your search terms.  In this example, we'll search for "William Shatner."  Click Go.
William Shatner search box
 

Step 5:

Review your results.  Note that the title of the article on the website doesn't always match the title of the article that appeared in the print edition.  (When citing your sources, you will use the title on the website.) 
Article screenshot - Like Captain Kirk, William Shatner will travel to space (almost) and the print edition title is Shatner spacebound in real life

 

Tip:

1. At the top of your search results are several filters.  Use the "Date Range" filter to limit your results to a specific set of dates.  For example, you might want articles about William Shatner from 1966-69 when he played Captain Kirk on the Star Trek television series.  You can also change the "Sort by" menu to bring the oldest articles to the top.  The "Type" filter may also be useful to find any video, audio, or graphics.

Search options on NYT's site

2. Many older articles are not available typed up on the NYT website.  For those articles, a link will be provided to the TimesMachine website where you can read the PDF.  Click it to view the entire article.

View on Timesmachine button

Search TimesMachine

Step 1:

Register for a free New York Times account. 
 

Step 2:

Login to your account on the NY Times website.
 

Step 3:

Go to the TimesMachine website.
 

Step 4:

Search for a specific topic, person, or event.  It can be helpful to change the dates to limit to a specific time period.  For example, we can search for "man on moon" and limit our results to the weeks surrounding the moon landing on July 20, 1969.  Note: Only articles published in the print edition from 1851-2002 are available on this site.  For more recent articles, follow the instructions above to search the main NYT website.

Search button, query "man on moon", and change dates


Step 5:

Scroll through the results until you find the article that you want.  In this case, we want the front page article that appeared on July 21 - the day after the moon landing.  Click the article's thumbnail image.  (Go ahead - click the image to read the article!)

Front page screenshot of "Men Walk on Moon"

 

Step 6:

Read the article.  Use the menu on the left to navigate to the next page (if the article appears on more than one page) and to download a PDF.  Note: You may only download up to 5 PDF articles per day

Screenshot of PDF link and page number links.

 

Tip:

Also in the left menu are options to email a link to the article to yourself.  You can also save the permalink, which is a shortened form of the URL.  Saving this will take you back to the article.

Email and permalink screenshot