The Discovery service searches across most of the Library's resources and for most subjects it is an excellent place
to start looking for information. 

It is always worth checking your subject page to see what specialist resources are available to you. For these subjects you would be much
better off visiting your subject page and using the specialist e-resources listed there. For other subjects the Discovery service
is a great place to start. Basic features of the Discovery service were covered in an earlier video

Advanced search

If you click on the advanced search link underneath the search box you will be offered a more sophisticated and
powerful set of search tools. On this advanced search screen you enter search terms and then use the drop down
menu to the right of each search box to choose whether you want to see only results where the keywords you have
entered appear in the title of an article, in the 200 word abstract or whether you want to search for something
very specific such as an author surname or the title of a journal an article appeared in. You can choose different 
filters for each box and click on the plus icon underneath to add more rows.

Beneath this there are many search options. We recommend ticking the box for full text only online unless you are
carrying out research for a major project such as the dissertation or doctorate where you may want to see
descriptions of articles that we do not have immediate access to ourselves but that you can ask to be sourced by
interlibrary loan and emailed to you.

We also recommend the peer review journal articles box. Peer-reviewed articles are scholarly journal articles that have been
scrutinized by other academics before they were published to check they are of high quality. For most subjects lecturers tend to like
to see that you have referenced peer review articles to support your arguments.

The building block search

A particularly advanced way of searching is to break your search down into a series of topics that you would want to
find in the perfect paper and then search for all the possible alternative terms for each topic, turning each into a new row and changing the
Boolean operator on the left hand side of each box so that the search will return records matching any one of the terms you enter.

Clear the search repeat for each other topic in turn and then finally click on search history.
Tick the boxes next to each of your previous searches and choose search with and to find all the articles that
include at least one term describing each of the different topics you want covered/

This is a powerful expert search technique called a building block search and often helps find relevant articles
when simple searches fail.

Search results screen

On the search results screen in addition to a possible research starter offering an overview of a topic and a list of
ebooks articles and other things matching your Search terms you may have noticed that there are sidebars on the left and right of the
screen.

You can see the number of search results just above the start of the results list. If you have found far too many results
or they do not look useful and relevant you should revisit your search and try using different search terms.
If your results look promising but there are just too many you can use the options in the left hand sidebar to
narrow your search.

Ways you can narrow your search 

To hone in on just the books and articles you want to include clicking the X next to the expander also
search within the full text of Articles making sure that full text online only and peer-reviewed journal articles are
listed as filters and if not tick both these boxes.

Change the date range for the articles to just the period you are interested in perhaps articles published in the last
10 years or between 1850 and 1910.
 
There are more filters you can experiment with below these but you should exercise caution using them particularly when filtering by subject
and geography. These filters rely on the publisher adding the correct subject and country terms to each article. You might end up not seeing relevant
articles if you apply these filters too eagerly.

Just above your search results you can also choose to sort your results by relevance or by date.

Other sources

On the right hand side of your search results you will see a list of some of the major databases that are not included in the discovery search results.
You can choose one of these and click the search button underneath to run the same search you've just carried out in one of those databases.
Beneath these Credo often offers one or more encyclopedia and dictionary entries for your Search terms. These are excellent starting points to explore the
broad sweep of a topic and begin to understand the basics of a new area.

Logging in and saving your progress

In the purple strip at the top of the screen there are a variety of personalization options. You can change the language the
Discovery service is displayed in change, the layout of the results and explore the in-depth help pages provided by
Ebsco although you might find it easier to find the answers you want by chatting to a librarian online.

One important feature of all Ebsco databases, including the Discovery service, is that you can create a 'My
Ebscohost account' and log in each time you use the Discovery service or another Ebsco resource and all of your searches and
search results folders and other work will be remembered.

If you close the web browser without logging first into your My Ebscohost account everything you have done will be
lost. You have to click on my Ebscohost and create a new free account for yourself. The first time you use this feature and
then remember to log in every time they're after to ensure your work is always saved.

Alternatively you can export the details of articles you find useful, download articles you want to save as you go and
use the share button above your search results to create a link to the search you just carried out and then copy and
paste this into a Google doc or similar so you can rerun your last search at will. Just make sure you have exported
everything you need before you close your web browser.

Here to help 

If you want to know more about using the discovery service please chat to a librarian online. They will be happy to help you tailor your searches
to get better results for your assignments and help you understand all of our resources much better.

Thanks for listening