The Discovery service is a powerful search tool that can help you find all the ebooks,
journal articles and other information resources you need for your course.

Unlike some of the more specialised resources available from your subject page the Discovery 
service brings together resources from many disparate sources. This includes introductory but
authoritative research starter articles, news, professional, academic and some image resources 
all together in one place from a single simple search. Unlike Google the Discovery service
shows only the resources that your lecturers want you to use and with a single click you can make 
it show only those resources that are available to you immediately online.

You can search the Discovery service from the Library website. Click on the blue 'Click here to search 
Library resources' button at the top of the Library website to bring up the Library search page
(on mobile devices this button appears just as a magnifying glass symbol).

The first search box on this page is the Discovery service search. Enter a few words that describe 
what you want to find. Let's look for things about Portsmouth. As you can see there's a lot
to choose from. Tick 'full text online only' to make sure that everything you have shown can be read 
online. Tick 'peer-reviewed journal articles' if you want to make sure that all the content you are 
seeing is an academic journal article. This is useful for many subjects where your lecturers want you to 
cite only the latest research on a topic otherwise you'll be shown everything related to your search topic 
from ebooks to online magazines, news broadcasts and other content that may not have the academic rigor 
expected for an academic source.

Using the date slider you can limit the publication date range of the articles you are shown. Slide the 
left marker across to choose the earliest date you want to see. Other options include restricting your 
results to articles written in English or other languages, published in particular countries, in
certain name journals or other publications or even on particular index topics. You can deselect any of these 
filters by clicking the box next to where it appears in the left side panel. Experiment and see how selecting and
deselecting filters alters your search results.

You can make a search more precise and run more sophisticated searches using the advanced search screen.
Here you can tell the Discovery service to show you articles only where a particular term appears only in the title 
of the article or the abstract rather than just anywhere in the article. This dramatically reduces the number of
results you'll be shown to those that are most focused on the topic that you want to find.

In this search we will look for academic journal articles that mention both Portsmouth and business in the article
title that are available immediately to read online and that were published in the last 10 years. Since there is 
a Portsmouth in New Hampshire in the United States we will also use the geography filter to show only articles 
about Portsmouth England. This yields just the three most recent and relevant results. 

Take a few minutes to play with the Discovery service. Try using the different tools to carry out a search in
your subject area. If you would like more advice on how to get the most out of the Discovery service or any 
other Library resource including help developing an effective search for particular assignments please pop in 
between 11AM and 3pm on a Monday to Friday we'll chat with a librarian online.

Happy searching!