Along with keeping up to date on national and international news, college students can now access The New York Times on the Web for research-oriented purposes. The publication launched a new section, "College Times," on its site, allowing students and faculty to peruse articles and access features catered to collegiate interests.
"College Times" launched last Wednesday, although the Times has not yet publicized the section, according to Sheryl WuDunn, Executive Director NEXGEN, the Times' in-house group for education-related issues. Found under the "Destinations" sidebar of the website's front page, the section offers several features for both students and faculty.
The site allows students to search for articles by subject, rather than by specific keywords. "Most sites, when searching something by word [return] a whole list of stories that have that specific word," WuDunn said. "It's not useful for trying to get to the meaty issues."
The new search engine picks out appropriate stories by grouping recent Times articles under 200-plus categories, such as Arts and Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, and several other traditional academic disciplines. This differs from searches performed on engines such as Google and Yahoo. "It picks out stories central to the subject itself rather than the word itself... This is new technology we've developed, a new way to search," WuDunn said.
The innovative search engine is intended to assist students who have a specific topic in mind. "I think it could be helpful when you're looking into certain fields of study. If you're studying biology, you can keep up with current events in that field," sophomore Shelly Gufert said. "By breaking it up into categories like that, I'd be more likely to read [the articles]."
Not all students are impressed, however. Freshman Marta Selinger felt the subject fields were not that helpful, since she can search for specific topics on other websites as well. "Maybe [the Times] is trying to put everything in one place, but I don't think I'd actually need it," Selinger said.
In addition to searching for recent articles, students and faculty can access site features, such as "What's Hot, What's Not", "College News and Views" (which reports recent news on college campuses throughout the country), and "Working," which features job and career news.
For faculty, the section offers "Teaching with The Times," a set of free curriculum guides that make suggestions on lectures, discussions, research papers, and tests in several subject areas. Also accessible is "Teaching Strategies," a forum through which professors can share their specific strategies and experiences with one another. In addition, professors can sign up to receive free e-mails about recent articles in their chosen subjects areas.
According to WuDunn, the section resulted from the requests of college faculty for a resource specific to college communities. "We talked to a lot of professors around the country and what they saw as a need for students," she said. "We had a lot of requests from professors who wanted access to...old New York Times stories."
The Times' regular website requires users to pay a fee for archived articles.
Despite the effort to pull together relevant information for college communities, some students feel the section is unnecessary.
"[College Times] is just like The New York Times, but it's trying to pick out articles for college students and I don't know if there is 'a college student'," Selinger said, pointing out articles on the section about the Oscars and college basketball. "Those are [articles] that are going to be on the front page of The New York Times anyway," she added.
Sophomore Nick Nguyen feels that "College Times" jazzes up the Times website, but doesn't add anything truly new. "Most students and teachers are intelligent enough to use the actual New York Times at this point...and this version seems like a hip rendition, almost to make it cool - which you don't really need."
