Learning and Teaching: Finding Information: Discovery

Introduction to Discovery

Discovery is the University of Suffolk’s library catalogue. With Discovery, you can search all our 151.3 million print and online resources. Whether you're looking for books, journal articles, videos, or any other academic material, Discovery is a comprehensive platform on which to start your research.

For guidance on obtaining specific resource types using Discovery, click the hyperlinks below:

For guidance on managing your library account, click the hyperlinks below:

Discovery

Why Should I use Discovery?

Discovery is specifically tailored to support academic research, ensuring that you have access to a wider range of high-quality, scholarly sources.

Reliable and Authoritative Sources: Discovery gives you access to an extensive collection of scholarly resources carefully curated by your librarians and course team. Unlike the open web, where information can be unreliable or biased, library databases offer peer-reviewed articles, academic journals, reputable books, and research papers. These sources undergo rigorous evaluation and scrutiny to ensure they’re appropriate to use for research and study.
Access to Subscription-Based Resources: Through Discovery, you gain access to a wide range of subscription-based resources that may not be freely available on the open web. These subscription-based materials expand your research options, enabling you to delve deeper into your subject matter and discover new perspectives that can enrich your academic work.
Advanced Search Features: Discovery is equipped with advanced search features designed to facilitate precise and targeted research. You can easily refine your search results by date, publication type, author, and more. This saves valuable time and allows you to focus on the most pertinent material for your research.

Citation Management and Academic Integrity: Discovery integrates with reference management tools (like RefWorks, Endnote and Zotero), which can assist you in organizing and formatting references for your assignments. By utilizing these features, you can streamline your citation process, and enhance the quality of your academic writing.

What can I find in Discovery?

With Discovery, you can search all our 151.3 million print and online resources. Whether you're looking for books, journal articles, videos, or any other academic material, Discovery is a comprehensive platform on which to start your research.

Click the dropdowns below for more information about the source types you can find via Discovery.

Making the most of Discovery

When it comes to searching, what you put in determines what comes out; the quality and relevance of your results will be determined by the appropriateness of your search terms and techniques.

Below are some simple top tips for making the most of Discovery:

Select appropriate search terms. Not sure how? Check out our guide on Generating Keywords and Alternative Terms.

Avoid misspellings, typos, and unnecessary punctuation. Remember that Discovery interprets your search terms literally, if you enter an incorrectly spelt word, it’ll look for that exact word!

Try phrase searching, denoted by double quotation marks (“ ”). This is a really easy way to quickly refine your results, it tells Discovery to search for your phrase (e.g., “graphic design” or “industrial action”) as one word. Want to learn more about search techniques? Check out our guide on Enhancing Your Search.

Filter your results. Filters are restrictions or limits you can apply to your search results to return more relevant material, you can filter by publication year, content type, language and more.

Save your results. Sign into your library account to save productive searches, or bookmark useful sources.

Now consolidate your knowledge. Complete the activity below:

Want to go further? Check out our Enhancing Your Search guide; it covers all you need to know about: boolean operators, phrase searching, truncation and more!