Using the Discovery Service

Hi students,

My name is Hannah Porter and I'm the Faculty Librarian for Business. In this video, I'm going to give you an introduction to our EBSCO Discovery Service.

To get started, go to the Library website: library.port.ac.uk

On the Library homepage, use this blue Search Library resources option – that will take you to our Search page. On the Search page, use the top box for the EBSCO Discovery Service. You've got your basic search, a search to find out which journals we subscribe to, and an option for an advanced search. I'm just going to do a basic search for "transformational leadership".

Now, you'll notice that I've put "transformational leadership" in quotation marks so it searches as a phrase. That's because I don't want "transformational" in one sentence and "leadership" in another – I want transformational leadership together. Now I click on Search.

At this point, you'll be greeted with this screen. Do make sure you choose "Continue personalised". That enables you to log into your own account using your University username and password, and save all your information to your personal area.

So, I'm going to log in, accept cookies, and now you can see I'm in the Discovery Service. To check you're signed into your account, just click on MyEBSCO at the top – you should see your name. That means you're signed in and can save everything to your account. If, for any reason, you didn’t choose Continue personalised, closing and reopening your browser should bring that screen back up, allowing you to sign in again with your University username and password.

As you can see, it has retained my search, and here is my list of results. There are some useful filters at the top that I can apply. At the top of your results, you'll find Research Starters from encyclopaedias, and there may also be a link to a matching University Library subject page, depending on your search.

A couple of things to note: this system searches everything the Library has – all of our books, eBooks, journal articles, and more – so you'll only see content the Library actually provides access to. If you scroll down, you’ll see books appear here, so you can quickly access eBooks. You can also access print books and place reservations, which will take you through to our Library Catalogue. You may still wish to use the Library Catalogue separately for book searches, but books are included here, too.

I tend to use this system primarily to find journal articles. You can quickly filter results by selecting Full Text Online, meaning you'll only see articles you can read and download immediately. You can also filter by Peer Reviewed, which ensures high-quality academic content, and then by Date Range – such as the past five or ten years – depending on your subject area.

I don't worry too much about Source Type because I'm focused on peer-reviewed journal articles. However, you'll notice the result list can still be quite large, because it searches your keywords across the entire document. To narrow your results, you can use Advanced Search.

If I go into All Filters, I can apply additional criteria. For example, I might want to choose a particular Subject Area – like transformational leadership. One feature I particularly like is under Content Provider: you can limit the search to just Business databases. Since Discovery searches all our databases, this is a useful way to focus your results. I’ll apply that now, and you’ll see I’ve got around 4,000 results. In Advanced Search, I can build a more structured search and choose where words appear – for instance, limiting transformational leadership to the Title field, which reduces the number of results. If I want to do a more comprehensive search, for example on recruitment and talent management, I might enter:

"talent management" OR "managing talent" (in the top box)

recruitment OR retention (in the next box)

Since journal articles may use different terms, using OR helps capture both. You can also use a truncation symbol – for instance, typing recruit* will find recruit, recruiting, recruits, recruitment, etc. For retention, I haven’t used an asterisk because there aren’t common alternatives.

Note: no quotation marks are needed for single words. When building your search, link similar terms across with OR, and link different concepts down using AND. You can also select where each term should appear, such as in the Title or Abstract. After running the search, I now have slightly fewer results.

Looking at the results screen, you can see various subject terms – these can help give you ideas for further searching. You can also restrict results by Subject Terms.

Each article listing shows the publication, the authors, and you can read the abstract by clicking Show More, where you'll see your search terms highlighted.

To access the full text, click on the Access options. Some articles may have a PDF link – clicking this opens the PDF and gives download options. However, not all articles are hosted in EBSCO. For example, one might say Access now – clicking that may redirect you to another provider. You'll then need to click Access through your institution, sign in, and download the article from there.

So, some content is in EBSCO, others in external providers – but all are subscribed to by the Library.

Now, there are some excellent saving options. If you see an article you like, click the Bookmark icon – it will be saved to your dashboard. You can also click the Cite button, choose APA 7th, and copy it to your clipboard. That gives you a basic reference – do double-check it against Library guidance, but they’re generally accurate for journal articles.

Under the three dots, there’s a Share option. If a DOI link is missing in your reference, use the permalink instead – it will always bring you back to that screen.

Another great feature is Add to Project. You can create a new project or add to an existing one – for example, I have a project on leadership. Once selected, click Add now and your article will be saved to that project.

All of your saved items can be found on the left-hand side: Projects, Saved articles, and more. You can also save your Searches to revisit later. Projects work like folders – allowing you to organise content by topic or assignment.

Other useful options include starting a new search, searching by publication, or exploring a concept to discover related topics visually. It’s a dynamic system, regularly updated, so keep exploring as new features are added.

I hope you enjoy using the system. Remember to check you're signed in each time and use your dashboard to save everything. You can start with a quick search or use Advanced Search to build something more comprehensive.

If you have any questions or need support using the system, do get in touch with us via the Library's 24/7 online chat.

This tutorial demonstrates the features of Concept Map. The Concept Map gives researchers a visual way to interact with their searches while also exploring additional related topics.