Primo Search Tips

When you are logged in, you can

• use the services of your account, e.g. request items, place items on hold and renew loan periods
• create and manage a “My favorites” list
• save your search queries.

In your account, you can see

• items you have requested or placed on hold
• items you have borrowed and their loan periods
• fees you need to pay.

You can

• request items or place items on hold
• renew loan periods
• cancel a hold.

Please log in to your account to request items from the closed stacks or place items on hold which are currently borrowed by other library users. Go to the section Get It in the details of the individual item. If you can request or place a hold on the item, the link Request/Hold will be shown. Open the link and submit your request.

Borrow, request, renew

If you want to renew loan periods, please log in to your account and click on the tab My loans. If it is possible to renew the loan period, the button renew  will appear next to the item you have borrowed. After you have clicked on the button, you will see the new due date.

Borrow, request, renew

Primo is the search tool for all items available at or via the library of the University of Mannheim: books, e-books, journals, e-journals, DVDs and interactive audiobooks.

You can find many journal articles in the search area „Articles & University Library Holdings“, or extend your search for articles by using our databases.

University Library Holdings
Here you will find more than 2.2 million items of Mannheim University Library, including books, e-books, journals, e-journals, CDs, DVDs and psychological tests.

Articles & University Library Holdings
Here you search 100 million additional items for e-journal articles, more e-books, and research papers.

Interlibrary loan
Your search has been unsuccessful? Here you can search the holdings of all academic libraries in Germany and order your item in just a few clicks.

Please enter one or several search terms. Primo will search for results containing all terms entered.

Search tips

• Use quotation marks to search for a combination of words, for example: “global warming“.
• Use OR between the search terms to return results that contain either of the terms you have entered, for example: Irish OR Celtic.
• Type NOT before a search term to exclude this term from your search, for example:  Celtic NOT Irish.
• Use * to replace letters at the end of search terms, for example: europ* will find European Council, European and more.
• Use ? to replace a letter in the search term, for example: wom?n will find woman and women.

Expert tip
Use  () to combine different search queries, for example: schiller (play OR dram*)  will find results containing Schiller and play as well as results containing Schiller and words with “dram-”.

Your search results are shown according to relevance. In the “Tweak results” column on the left, you can sort the list of search results by:

• date – ascending or descending
• alphabetical order (author or title of the item)

In addition, you can use the filter options, for example, to receive only the latest results.

In the “Tweak results” column on the left, you can filter your results by one or more criteria.

• Media type
• Year of publication
• Language
• Location
• Subject and more ...

At the top of the left column, you can see the active filters. There you can also reset all or individual filters.

Here you can combine several search criteria, even before you submit your search query. Your search query becomes more advanced.

You can

• perform a specific search in individual search fields – for example in the field author/creator or subject.
• determine the precision of your search by using contains, is exact or starts with – for example: The search for “Title is exact Romeo and Juliet” will find items with the title “Romeo and Juliet” but not the book “Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet”.
• combine search fields by adding as many lines as needed.
• limit your search by selecting the material type, language or publication date – for example, if you search for “JuS”, you can limit the material type and select “journals” to find the “JuS” journal.

Search tip
Combine the search in the fields author and title. The list of search results will only contain the specific work of this author and no secondary literature. Searching for the author Shakespeare and the title “Romeo and Juliet”, for example, will only reveal “Romeo and Juliet” by Shakespeare.

Expert tip
You can limit your search to a specific library of the University of Mannheim, if you select the field “Library Section” in the advanced search option and enter the following abbreviations:

• medio for the Media Center
• test for the Test Library
• A3 for the A3 Library
• A5 for the A5 Library
• BWL for the Schloss Schneckenhof Library
• BSE for the Schloss Ehrenhof Library

By clicking on the pin needle, you can save your search results or access the My favorites list. In your “My favorites” list, you can see the search results you have saved and your search history.

If you are logged in to your library account, you can also use the pin needle to save search queries and to access them in the My favorites list.

You can save a search result by using the pin needle which you see in the list of search results or on the details page of an item. If you click on the pin needle in the menu bar in the upper right corner, you can access the search results you saved.

If you are logged in to your library account, your search results are being saved beyond a session.

If you are logged in to your library account, you can save the list of search results by using the pin needle shown above the list. In the tab Saved searches in the  My favorites  list, you can see your saved search queries.

If you want to receive notifications about new search results for your query, please turn on the notifications for this query by clicking on the bell icon.

Yes. During a research session, your search history is being saved until you close the browser window. You can access your search history by clicking on the clock in the menu bar in the upper right corner.

If you are logged in to your library account, your search history is being saved beyond a session.

In the list of search results, click on the three dots next to a search result or go to the Send to section on the detail page of a search result, and:

• export search results in the BibteX and RIS format
• see examples for citations
• copy the permalink to an item
• print the item details
• send the item details as an e-mail.

In the list of search results, click on the three dots next to a search result or go to the Send to section on the detail page of a search result. Use the BibTeX or RIS button to export your search results to a reference management software.

Export in Citavi
The RIS format is a good option for exporting data from the Primo catalog to Citavi. In most cases, you can keep the suggested character set, UTF-8.

• Start exporting the data by clicking on DOWNLOAD.
• In the dialog window, select “Open with” and then “Citavi” and confirm by clicking “OK”.
• Select the item in the Citavi import window and confirm the import.
• Please check if the bibliography data have been exported completely and correctly.

Export in Zotero
Export data from the Primo catalog with the Zotero picker in your browser. In the Zotero picker, you can select the items you want to import from the search results list or export the detail data of an item.

In the list of search results, click on the three dots next to a search result or go to the Send to section on the detail page of a search result.

If you work with LaTeX, it is advisable to save the references in a BibTeX file. Use the BibTeX button in the section Send to.

• If you use BibLaTeX, you can keep the suggested character set, UTF-8.
• If you use the standard BibTeX, please select the US-ASCII character set.
• Start exporting the data by clicking on DOWNLOAD.