What can I find in the Discovery System?

Our discovery system is the modern alternative to the classic online catalogue. Based on search engine technology, it enables a different way of searching for literature. Access to the user account and campus delivery service ordering are integrated.

Click here to access the discovery system

The entire holdings of the University Library (including all locations) are available for the standard search.

A hit list can also be extended to “Common libraries” with the facet “Library” → “Area” (reload with the ‘Activate’ button).
This then includes licence-free e-media (OpenAccess) as well as the media holdings of over 400 libraries in the GBV Common Library Network. Where applicable, there is full-text access for external media. It is also possible to initiate interlibrary loans. It also contains more than 57 million printed articles and more than 34 million electronic resources (e-books, e-journals, e-articles).

Facets for restricting large hit lists to keywords, publication periods, media types, languages, printed or electronic publications, etc. are offered depending on the context of the occurrence in the respective search result.

With search categories, you can predefine your search words in the input line as "Person", "Signature" or “Title”. Otherwise the search across all categories of the title data is preset with "All".

Search tips for the discovery system

Search terms

Enter one or more terms in the search slot. The "Autocomplete" function supports you in selecting the search terms.

Please note that a comma (,) entered is interpreted by Discovery as an OR link. Therefore, please omit commas in the search if they are not required as control characters.

Placeholder *

You can place the * character anywhere in the search term or at the end of the search term. It stands for an arbitrary number of arbitrary characters.
Example:

  • publi*ation finds Publikation and publication
  • model* finds model, modelling, modeling, models etc.

Placeholder ?

You can place the ? character anywhere in the search term or at the end of the search term. It replaces exactly one character.
Example:

  • Publi?ation finds Publikation and publication
  • W??mar finds Weimar, Wismar etc.

People search

Preferably enter the name in straight inverted commas when searching for a specific person.
Example: "Hans Fallada"

Original written search

If titles are available in their original form, you can also search for them in this way.
Example: Ασθϵνἠς ουγκατάθϵσις

Phonetic search

The phonetic search can also be used to find similar terms. This is helpful if the correct spelling of a name or term is unknown.
Example: "Tollstoy" finds Tolstoi, Tolstoj, Tolstoy etc.

Search presets

You can narrow down your search by using various default settings. For example, if you are looking for a work by a specific author but do not know the title, you can enter the author in the recruitment settings. The search will then only be carried out in the works of this author.

Narrow search result

Period, type, format: The result can be narrowed down to a selected period using the slider or by manually entering the desired years. By activating the desired checkbox, the search result can be narrowed down to a specific publication type and selected publication formats.

Search queries and search results

Confirm search queries by clicking on the search button. The terms entered are searched for simultaneously in all fields of the title description (person, title keyword, keyword etc.). By deafult, the search results are sorted according to relevance ranking for the highest possible match between the search query and the available data.

Access to licensed electronic resources

(e-books, e-journals, e-articles)

The University Library offers full text access for a large number of electronic resources. For access outside the university campus, a connection to the Greifswald university network via Shibboleth or VPN is required.

Search commands for a combined search term entry

To search for licence-free online media alone (combined with a keyword)
          openaccess(true) subject(business psychology)

Otherwise, the following search commands can be used in the search input line (structure search command with colon, example)

Author or editor name
          author:Kehlmann daniel

Title
          title:Handbook of media and communication governance

Systematics (RVK)
          topic:MD 6400

Publishers
          publisher:Nomos

Licence collections e.g. for certain e-book packages
          collection:Springer

ISBN
          isn:978-3-407-25876-2

Following the same structure
          year:2022
          subject:international law
          keyword:psychology
          signature(610/AK 39580 L716)

Several search command specifications in succession with spaces are executed as two conditions valid together (AND).