What can I find in Discovery?

Our Discovery is a modern literature research portal based on search engine technology. As an alternative to our classic online catalogue, Discovery enables a quick thematic search of not only all kinds of media from the library holdings, but also articles from licensed databases and freely available electronic texts. Discovery's responsive web design makes it ideal for mobile devices. Access to your library user account is also integrated.

The default search covers the holdings of the following libraries in the regional network:

In Discovery it is possible to extend the search to the Common Union Catalogue (GVK). This search covers over 200 million titles in over 1,000 academic libraries in ten federal states. Suitable literature can be ordered via interlibrary loan. To add the GVK to your search, click on the "Settings" button to the left of the search bar and move the slider "Advanced search in all libraries" to the right.

Link to Discovery

Search tips
Search terms	Type one or more terms into the search field. The minus symbol allows you to exclude terms. The "Auto Complete" function helps you to select the search terms.
Wildcard *	The * character can be placed anywhere in the search term or the end of the search term. It replaces any number of characters. Example: - Publiation* will be find publikation and publication - sanier* will be find Sanierung, sanieren, Sanierungspreis etc.
Wildcard ?	The ? character can be placed anywhere in the search term or the end of the search term. It replaces exactly one character. Example: - Publi?ation will be find Publikation and publication - W??mar will be find Weimar, Wismar etc.
Person search	If you are searching for a specific person, preferably type the name in quotation marks. Example: "Gerd Röpke"
Search with original character sets	If titles are described in the original character set, you can search for them as well. Example: История текста и биография А. П. Платонова
Phonetic search	With the phonetic search similar terms can be found. This is useful when the correct spelling of a name or term is unknown. Example: Tollsdeu will be find Tolstoi, Tolstoj, Tolstoy etc.
Restrict search results	Period, Type, Format By use of slider control or by manually entering the desired years, the result can be restricted to a selected period.
Search queries and search results	Confirm search queries by clicking the search button. The entered terms are searched simultaneously in all fields of the title description (person, title keyword, subject, etc.). The search result is sorted by relevance ranking, the highest possible match between the your search query and the available data.
Access to licensed electronic resources (e-books, e-journals, e-articles)	For a large number of electronic resources, the university library provides access to the electronic full text. For access from outside the university campus it is necessary to connect to the Rostock university network via VPN or use a university application server. The following electronic resources are also accessible outside of Rostock University with your Shibboleth login.