What can I find in the Discovery System?

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

Click here to access the discovery system

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

A results 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. The Discovery index 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 result lists to keywords, publication periods, media types, languages, printed or electronic publications, etc. are offered depending on the context of their occurrence in the respective search results.

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 helps you select the search terms.

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

Truncation *

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.

Truncation ?

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.

Search for persons

Preferably enter the name in straight quotation marks when searching for a specific person.
Example: "Oscar Wilde"

Original written search

If titles are available in their original alphabetical spelling, 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 you can preset to search the author category in the settings. The search will then only be carried out regarding this author's name.

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 limited 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 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

For searching licence-free online media only (combined with a keyword)
          openaccess(true) subject(international law)

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

Author or editor name
          author:Snyder timothy

Title
          title(Introduction to Physical Chemistry)

Systematics (RVK)
          topic:MD 6400

Publishers
          publisher:Palgrave

Collections of licenced e-media
          collection:Springer

ISBN
          isn:978-3-407-25876-2

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

Several consecutive search terms with spaces are executed as two conditions that apply together (AND).