Here's my summary of what I think I know about the NY Times online - please comment to fill in what I've missed!
For the daily reader who wants to scan headlines and see photos, it makes sense to visit NYTimes.com to browse the day's news.
A few features like op-ed pieces and articles published between 1981 and two weeks ago are limited to 
Times Select subscribers. You can get free access to Times Select articles with your unlv.edu email address!
Sign up for free educational Times Select access.
The complete New York Times archives are also searchable through links from the UNLV Libraries web site. The Historical New York Times Archive offers PDF images of newspaper pages from 1851-2003. Magazine and book review pages are included.
To run a search that includes articles from after 2003, or if you wish to search other major metropolitan newspapers in addition to the Times, use ProQuest National Newspapers from the library web site. Full text of articles from the East Coast Late Edition is available from June 1, 1980 to the current day's paper. The New York Times Magazine and the New York Times Book Review are both available from 1997 forward and may be searched in combination with other papers or separately.
Access to the full text of articles from the New York Times is also available through Lexis Nexis Academic (1980-current) and
Factiva (most recent three months) for users accustomed to these search interfaces.
Occasionally an article or photo will be removed from the online archives as a result of a court case that limited the rights of newspapers to republish the work of certain freelancers in digital format. Citations to these articles or photos appear in the database along with a note that the content has been removed. These articles or photos are almost always available on microfilm, which you can use on the second floor of Lied Library.
Another search option is to use Google's news archive search. Direct access to articles found using this search is most often pay-per-view; however, if you have set up academic access to Times Select you can bypass the $4.95 fee for articles published after 1981. If you haven't set up Times Select or need an older article, use the citation information to locate the same article in the Historical New York Times Archive.
Pay-per-view articles from other papers that you find through the Google News Archive may also be available through one of UNLV's online newspaper collections. To find out if a particular paper is available, search for the title or city on the list of UNLV's print and online journal subscriptions, which will tell you what dates are available for each paper and link you to the online source.
