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Overview
FT.com is an English-language, online business news portal, produced by London-based Financial Times Ltd. FT coverage of financial markets and interests is global, with extensive coverage of Western Europe, North America, China and Japan, South and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. FT was one of the first newspaper publishers to successfully charge for access to its website.
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Collection Content
Financial Times (FT) provides coverage of financial and political events worldwide, with web content updated on a continual basis. Widely respected as a business and financial news resource, content generated by FT includes news of finance, macroeconomic issues, business topics and company information. However, FT also maintains broad coverage of world news and geopolitical issues, the global economy, science and the environment, and arts, culture, style, and other "life" issues.
FT.com includes Financial Times-produced electronic full-text and multi-media content from August 2004 forward. Electronic ("ePaper") versions of the print edition from 2004 onward are also available through www.ft.com. The Financial Times historical archive, covering the digitized daily version of the Financial Times from the 1880s through 2007, is available as a separate product through Gale Cengage.
FT.com content includes multimedia, data and other dynamic content not included in the print edition or in the text-only content FT provides to LexisNexis, EBSCO, Factiva, Bloomberg, and other aggregators. While there is an embargo of 30 days for access to that FT content through third party aggregators, the academic license to FT.com provides up-to-the minute access to FT content. FT has an agreement in place with LexisNexis, EBSCO, Bloomberg and Factiva to lift the 30 day embargo for any clients with the academic license in place.
Delivery
Web delivery through www.ft.com is compatible with all major browsers. The academic license enables individuals to access FT content across different platforms including desktop (FT.com + ePaper), tablets and smartphones. Users must create an individual account to view FT.com remotely and on mobile devices.
The latest online "edition" automatically stores for offline access in mobile and tablet devices, including iPhone, iPad, Android & Windows 8.
FT provides tools within its platform for use of FT.com content. These include (but are not limited to):
- Article clipping that allows for notes and tagging of articles for later use, generation of reading lists, or sharing with other users;
- FT Headline API to create customized RSS feeds that can be inserted into university systems such as Blackboard or Libguides;
- Email alerts (pre-packaged or customized) to keep up to date on specific topics or terms;
- Portfolio tools to track stocks and news over time and make comparisons.
FT offers additional information at http://education.ft.com/ and offers training sessions for customers to learn more about the benefits, tools and resources for FT's academic clients.
Terms
The FT offers an academic site license in the U.S., through the Academic Business Library Directors association. As of January 2015, 25 CRL libraries had a site license to the resource.
Academic site license pricing is based on the estimated number of "core readers" at the subscribing library, which number is directly related to the number of enrollees in the institution's graduate business program. This calculation for the initial subscription year is an estimate, and in subsequent years is determined by the actual amount of content used per reader in the previous year.
Terms of access are governed by FT's standard "Terms and Conditions" as well as its "Copyright Policy," which instructs how users may use FT content and provides guidance on uses that require the purchase of additional licences from FT. As of September 2015, registered users accessing FT.com through paid subscription may:
- View content for personal use on any device that is compatible with FT.com and store content on that device for personal use;
- Print single copies of articles on paper for personal use;
- Share links to articles using tools provided by FT;
- Share links to articles published at www.ft.com/presscuttings using the ‘Email article’ tool;
- Use spidering technology to search and link to FT.com, provided that such use does not infringe FT's restrictions on use.
Registered users who are not accessing through a paid subscription can view up to three articles a month, as well as blog posts and certain other FT content.
Unless using FT's supplied tools, users are not permitted to copy FT content from FT.com and republish or redistribute full text articles (for example by pasting them into emails or republishing them in any media). Users are restricted to distributing only original FT headlines and links to articles, along with teaser text (the first 140 characters of an article). Additional restrictions apply to abstracting or summarizing articles from FT.com.
Strengths and Weaknesses
John Cassidy, "The Financial Times and the Future of Journalism" in The New Yorker, September 28, 2015:
"In emphasizing digital distribution early on and setting up a metered paywall, which allowed readers to access a limited number of posts each month before they had to purchase a (pricey) subscription, the F.T.pioneered a business model that was widely adopted elsewhere, including at this magazine. Today, the F.T. has almost three quarters of a million paying readers, more than at any point in its hundred-and-twenty-seven-year history. Roughly two thirds of those readers are digital subscribers, who pay high prices: as much as four hundred and eighty dollars a year."
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