Electronic information resources search

Discovery MUNI https://discovery.muni.cz/ serves as a library catalogue and a search interface for subscribed electronic information resources. It provides access to a wide range of resources:

– books, journals, and other documents from MU libraries,

– articles, e-books, and other online documents from e-resources accessible at MU.

After signing in, you can manage your library account, renew and request loans, save search results etc.

You can search in Discovery MUNI without signing in. However, you need to sign in if you want to place requests (for example, place a hold on an item that is currently on loan or request an item from closed stacks), or access your library account to view and renew your loans.

You can sign in if you are a registered user of MU Libraries, i.e. if you have activated library services at https://is.muni.cz/knihovna/?lang=en. MU students and employees can activate library services using their Personal ID (UČO) and primary password. Members of the public can create a new account and, when visiting the library, pay the registration fee according to the current price https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/official-notice-board/library-regulations/price-list.

To sign in Discovery MUNI, click the icon in the upper-right corner and select Sign in:

You can sign in to your library account if you are a registered user of the MU Libraries, i.e. if you have activated library services at https://is.muni.cz/knihovna/?lang=en.

To access your library account, click the icon in the top-right corner and select „Library account“:

Your current loans and their due dates are displayed in your account. To renew a loan, click „Renew“ button:

Your account also allows you to view (and cancel) your loan requests, as well as view your saved records and saved searches.

The search field drop-down menu allows you to specify which groups of records you want to search:

MU libraries & e-resources - searches the MU library catalogue as well as journal and book e-resources available at MU

MU libraries - searches only the MU library catalogue (documents held in MU libraries)

MU e-resources - searches only journal and book e-resources available at MU (for a list of e-resources, visit https://ezdroje.muni.cz/prehled/?lang=en)

Other institutions - searches the library catalogues and e-resources of other institutions participating in the CARDS project.

When searching, you can use Boolean operators and wildcards:

Retrieves records containing all three words: “atlas”, “anatomy”, and “human”. The AND operator does not need to be entered.

Retrieves records containing either “Czech” or “Czechia”, or both words.

Retrieves records containing “celtic” but not the word “irish”.

Retrieves records containing “Shakespeare” and either “tragedy” or “sonnet” (or both words).

Retrieves records containing either “irish” or “celtic” (or both words) but not “gaelic”.

Please note: The operators AND, OR, and NOT must be entered in uppercase. Otherwise, the search engine will remove them and perform a simple search without operators.

The question mark serves as a wildcard for a single character. It retrieves records containing “woman” and “women”.

The asterisk serves as a wildcard for multiple characters. Entering cultur* retrieves records containing strings such as “culture”, “cultural”, or “culturally”.

Please note: Search expansions (such as for synonyms) are disabled when search queries contain wildcards.

Exact phrases

To search for an exact phrase, you can use quotation marks:

Retrieves records containing the exact phrase in quotation marks. If the phrase is not enclosed in quotation marks, the system searches for records containing the individual words, regardless of whether the words appear next to each other or in the specified order.

As with the basic search, you can first specify which groups of records you want to search:

MU libraries & e-resources - searches the MU library catalogue as well as journal and book e-resources available at MU

MU libraries - searches only the MU library catalogue (documents held in MU libraries)

MU e-resources - searches only journal and book e-resources available at MU (for a list of e-resources, visit https://ezdroje.muni.cz/prehled/?lang=en)

Other institutions - searches the library catalogues and e-resources of other institutions participating in the CARDS project.

Unlike the basic search, you can also specify directly which fields you want to search – title, author, or subject. Queries can also be combined using Boolean operators.

In the following example, we are searching for documents that contain the keywords in title or subject headings:

Advanced search also allows you to specify the document type (book, article, journal, etc.), publication year, and document language.

By default, results are sorted by relevance, but you can also choose to sort them by publication date or alphabetically by title/author.

For quick narrowing, you can use the buttons “Available online” and “Held in library”.

The menu also allows you to narrow results by additional criteria (document type, publication year, library location, etc.):

To apply a specific filter in the left menu, confirm your selection by clicking the “Apply filters” button:

To view information about the number of copies of a specific title and their availability for loan at a given library, click the “Available” link:

To view the copies held at a specific library, click “View Items”:

In the example below, we have selected the copies available in the open shelves (= in the reading room) at the Faculty of Economics and Administration. “Item in place” means that the copy is available for loan. For more detailed information, such as the call number, click “Expand all”:

If the copies of a specific title are on loan or need to be retrieved from a closed stack, the “Request” option will appear (after signing in):

Then you need to select the library (pickup location) and the loan period you are interested in from the available options. You can also change the date until which the request should remain active (by default, it is set to 6 months):

If you need to repeat a search in the future, you can save the search query. In the displayed results, click “Save and export all results” and then select “Save query”:

You can find the saved query in your Library account under “Saved searches”:

If you click on the saved query, the search will be run again and the results will be displayed. If you select “Set up an alert for this search”, the system will automatically notify you by email whenever new documents matching your query are added to the catalog or e-resources.

You can also save records. After selecting a record, click the “Add to saved records” icon:

You can find saved records in your Library account under “Saved records”. To remove a record, click the “Remove from saved records” icon:

Search results can also be exported. After selecting the i records, click the icon to display the available export options:

Results can be exported, among other formats, in RIS format for citation managers or as an Excel file.

To search for online documents (books, articles, journals) available from MU computers, select “MU E-resources” from the drop-down menu:

The current list of e-resources available at MU can be found here: https://ezdroje.muni.cz/prehled/?lang=en

If you use the default “MU libraries & e-resources” search scope, the results will include both online documents and documents physically available in the libraries. The results can, however, be further narrowed to online documents only by using the “Available online” button:

To open the full texts of results, click the “Available online” button:

For some results, a direct link to the PDF is available. Clicking the drop-down menu also provides links to other online versions of the document:

Note: To access online documents via the links from computers outside the MU network, you have to be signed in to Discovery MUNI (see Sign in) or use VPN remote access: https://ezdroje.muni.cz/vzdaleny_pristup/eduvpn.php?lang=en.

If you have sufficient information to identify a document (DOI, ISBN etc.), you can use the Citation Linker to quickly find a specific book, article, or journal.

After clicking the link in the top menu bar, a form will appear where you select the document type:

In our case, after entering the ISBN and clicking “Submit” a record was displayed, showing that the book is available in MU libraries:

Under “Journal Search,” you can find a list of journals available online at MU, as well as journals available physically in MU libraries.

You can browse the list by categories or search for a specific journal by title or ISSN:

If at least some volumes of a given journal are available online or physically in MU libraries, a record will be displayed. In this case, the journal Blood is available in both formats (available volumes can be found by clicking the links):