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Computing Course (Informatique)

Mrs. Edie Chakar

LEBANESE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LETTERS AND HUMAN SCIENCES II

February 7, 2014

Authored by: Bassem Deaibess

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Table of Contents APPLIED ONLINE RESEARCH ................................................................................................................................ 2

Webmail........................................................................................................................................................ 2

Top 6 Email Services .................................................................................................................................. 2

Registering on a service (Sing up Process) ................................................................................................ 3

Webmail dashboard or interface .............................................................................................................. 4

Composing an email .............................................................................................................................. 4

How to search for information online ......................................................................................................... 6

Finding information .................................................................................................................................. 6

Search Parameters .................................................................................................................................... 7

Online information Credibility ..................................................................................................................... 9

Digital Information ..................................................................................................................................... 11

Converting a hard copy into a soft copy ................................................................................................. 11

Digital Scan .......................................................................................................................................... 11

Optical character recognition (OCR) ................................................................................................... 11

Online Electronic Libraries ...................................................................................................................... 13

Finding Scholarships Online ........................................................................................................................ 15

References .................................................................................................................................................. 18

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APPLIED ONLINE RESEARCH

Webmail

Top 6 Email Services

When one search online for the best 6 free webmail providers he will surely come across over a dozen of them, but before citing the 6 top rated ones, it is important to note the difference between an email and a webmail, in fact an email is the message we send using an email client, but it has become a trend of the virtual world to abbreviate Email Clients or Email Service Providers into the word Email. Now in brief the difference between a Regular Email and a Webmail is that a regular email uses what we call “Email Client software”, receives and organises our emails on the computer itself, this is done using two major protocols, POP (Post Office Protocol) and IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)1. By contrast a webmail is an “email client implemented as a web application accessed via a web browser” 2 in other words, an online “website” that provides email services for sending receiving and organising emails using a web browser where the emails are actually stored on the service‟s servers rather than on the computer of the user, some webmail services support POP and IMAP and some even have an email client of their own. Now that we defined the difference between a regular Email Service and a Webmail, we will name the most prominent Free Webmail services on the internet today. It is to be noted that it will be impossible to nominate the most famous or most used Free Webmail services as there is no official count for that and many polls online present totally different results, but no matter how different the results are, the major 3 free webmail services are always constant, and these are:

1. Gmail.com or Google Mail (from Google) 2. Yahoo.com (from Yahoo) 3. Outlook.com (formally Hotmail.com from Microsoft)3

In addition we have: 4. Mail.com 5. Zohomail.com 6. GMX.com

There are many other free webmail services that are popular in certain parts of the world, like AOL.com in the United States and North America, and Mail.ru in Russia. Each of these free webmail services have their pros and cons, varying between storage space, support of various desktop client email protocols and security issues.

1 Other protocols: SMTP, SSL

2 Wikipedia, Webmail, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webmail

3 Live.com, Windows Live, Windows Mail and Hotmail are all practically the same service

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Registering on a service (Sing up Process)

When singing up for a new email service, all services follow almost the same process, though some services might require more or less fields of input depending on their level of security and the different options they provide. It is also worth mentioning that when a user click on the register or sign up button, some webmail services will start by offering different paid packages or “bundles” alongside the free service. Almost all Sing up Processes are done through several steps, and except the first three fields listed below, there is no particular order in which these fields are present, even some of them are related to the email setup done after registration. The common registration fields for all services are the following:

1. Email Address (or ID or Email Name): The user‟s desired email username 2. Password (or Choose /Create Password): User‟s sign in password. Most current

services include a „strength bar‟ next to the Password field, this bar indicates how „strong‟ or „hard to guess‟ the password is, usually it is assessed through the mixture of letters with different capitalisation and numbers (and sometimes different symbols like „*‟ or „+‟). Although most services will accept the password input no matter what strength it is, some would not allow the sign up process to continue if the password was „weak‟. In addition many services have a minimum (and sometimes a maximum) requirement for the passwords to be accepted, in most cases the service demands a minimum length of 6 to 8 letters, some of them can limit the length i.e. not more than 15 letter, many would require numbers to be included and some would not allow symbols and/or spaces to be used.

3. Confirm (or re-type) Password: Since passwords are almost always encrypted and not visible when being typed on screen, it is required from users to re-enter their password to prevent them from mistyping it and lose their access to their account upon sign up.

Some sign up processes are done using only these three fields, and leave all other fields for the email setup phase, others use a multi-steps sing up process where the user click on the “next” button to proceed to the next fields, the most common ones are: 4. First Name: User‟s first name. 5. Last Name: User‟s last name.

Some services uses just one field for the First and Last Name called simply Name.

6. Gender: Specify if the user is male or female. Sometimes a service would supplement or substitute this field with the Title field where the user enters his title: Mr, Miss, Mrs, Dr, Prof… etc

7. Date of Birth: User‟s Birth date by day month and year usually. 8. Location or Country: The country where the user is resident. 9. Contact Email (or Other Email or Current Email): Most services require an

alternative email address which is sometimes used to verify the user‟s registration, but mainly it is used in case the user forgot his password or had his email hacked, the service then will contact the user through his other alternative email and send him a new password or a code to reactivate his service.

10. Phone Number: Is a relatively new option that is becoming more common, used for the same reason as the Alternative Email, as well as an added layer of security to add more protection either through requiring a code entry sent to the user‟s mobile phone which would be needed alongside the password, or as a notification method through SMS in case of potential hacking detection.

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11. Secret Question: Requires the user to either chose a question from a pre-prepared list and put a unique answer, or in some services would allow the user to type in the question and its answer. This is used later as an additional security layer in case the user needed to reset his password for any reason (usually either suspecting that his password is hacked or he had forgotten it). Through this question the service can verify that it is the authentic user who is requesting the change.

It is to be noted as well that some services require the user to enter a text or a word that is shown as a picture in a box, the words, numbers or symbols are usually distorted in a way that it is not digitally recognisable as text. This is done so the service can make sure that the user is actually real human and not automated bot software that is trying to create what is called spam email accounts.

Webmail dashboard or interface

Once a user access his email he will be taken to the main interface usually called dashboard, the main section shows the Folder Panel and the emails thumbnails that are in the main folder which is always called the Inbox folder, where emails are received by default. The main three other folders that usually are pre-set by the service are Spam or Junk, Trash or Bin and the Sent folders. Spam is were emails that are identified as spam or „unwanted emails‟ are sent, Trash is where the deleted emails go, both these folders usually delete the emails inside of them periodically. Sent is self-explanatory. Another folder that some services create automatically is the Draft folder; this is where incomplete or unsent mails are saved. Most webmail services offer the option to add custom folders and subfolders for better email categorisation, other ways of categorisation is known as email flagging or starring, where emails are flagged or starred according to their level of importance. As well most webmail services provide additional tools like calendar and/or organiser, a spam filter, a filter to automatically put received emails in certain folders depending on their subject and/or sender address, and obviously a Compose New Mail button.

Composing an email

When composing an email the webmail service interface includes the following: 1. From: Usually this field is filled by default by the user‟s email address, some services

offer access to other webmail services, or present the user with multiple email addresses and in this case the user can chose from a list in this field.

2. To: This is where the user input the email(s) address (es) that they wish to send an email to. The email addresses can be separated by a coma (,) or a semicolon (;)

3. CC: Abbreviation of Carbon Copy a bit similar to the TO field, here the user can include one or more emails to people who should receive the same email. The reason why there is a To and a CC fields although both do the same job is related to communication skills, there is no rule of thumb here, and this is left for the sender to decide, but usually the emails included in the TO field are for recipients whom the sender is expecting an action from, like a reply for example, and recipients included in the CC are those who are not required to do the main action but are simply being informed of the message.

4. BCC: Abbreviation of Blind Carbon Copy, unlike the TO and CC fields, emails included in the BCC are invisible to the other receivers.

5. Subject: The subject of the email the user is sending, some services would prompt the user if this field is left empty.

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6. Message body: This is the big field that usually takes the bulk of the screen, here is where the user writes his message, and in common terms this is the actual email.

Most services give the users the ability to format the email text and content they are sending, and thus include a tool bar with font, paragraph, alignment, bulleting, numbering, and indent options, some even enable HTML coding within the email as well as inserting images, videos and emoticons as part of the email object or body not as an attachment. When composing an email webmail providers and email clients present the following options:

1. Send: Sends the newly written or previously drafted email. 2. Save as Draft: Saves the current message in the Draft folder for later use, note that not

all services provide this option. 3. Attachment: Allows the user to load the email, hence the term attach, with any sort of

file, or multiple files, most services have a limit to the number of MBs or GBs allowed within a single email, some webmail providers offer alternative services for file transfer that exceeds the allowed limit.

Some services provide additional options such as setting the email priority level for the receivers, adding a virtual business card, switching between plain text and html formats, and managing attachment files. When reading a received email the following options are presented:

1. Reply: Opens the email composer with the TO field filled with the email address of the sender, and the original email message included or “quoted” in the message body, the user can edit or even delete the original message all together.

2. Reply to all: Same as the Reply button except that if the received email included more than one recipient, whether in the TO alone or with TO and CC; the replay will be received by all of them.

3. Forward: Sends a received email to another address different from the original sender address.

4. Delete: Delete the current email or the selected emails. These are the major four options that are always found on all webmail services, the next ones are becoming a standard as well, although some services omit some of them:

5. Mark as Spam: Although most webmail services apply what is known as a Spam Filter and can efficiently identify spam mail, few can always get past the filter, or if the nature of the spam is personal, which means the author is known and is spamming the user‟s account i.e. sending the same email over and over for the purpose of inflicting harm or annoyance, in these cases the user has to mark the received email as spam and all other emails from that same address would be filtered out. Some webmail services has advanced Spam filters and options, some more efficient than others.

6. Mark as Read/Unread: sometimes users read an email and then decide to keep it as unread so it would remain in the inbox for them to notice later, in that case the user can mark the email as unread, and that will result in the return of the user back to the inbox as if the email hasn‟t been open. On other occasions some users would want to mark emails as read even if they did not read them, this is usually done to clear the email from the inbox without deleting it. Both options can work on a single email or on all selected.

7. Move to: Gives the user the option to move their emails from the inbox into other folders either the default ones or the ones created by the user. Most of the time this option supports multi selection.

The other notable option that most webmail services provide is the Save Email as which allows the user to save an email into either an html file or a document. Also almost all services provide a Print option so that users can print their emails on hard copies i.e. paper.

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How to search for information online

The subject of doing a research online can be tackled from many points and can go far beyond the scope of this research; therefore we will just go through the basics.

Finding information

The most obvious and widely used system is the Search Tool that is included in most modern browsers (where we usually input the URL, or next to it in a search field). Most browsers will deal with the address bar as a search field and use one of the major search engines that are affiliated with the browser and execute a search. Alternatively the most used way is to actually go to a Search Engine website and type in the search subject or Keyword(s) into the engine‟s search field. The most known search engines online are the following:

Google Search (by Google.com)

Bing (By Microsoft Corp.)

Yahoo! (By Yahoo.com)

Ask.com (By Ask.com)

Aol.com (By AOL Inc.)

Mahalo.com (By Mahalo.com)

These are common search engine that many use to search online, some have more options than others, and some defer in the method that they use, for example the first widely used three engines, uses what is known as a web crawler system and an Indexing Algorithm that is almost totally automated, while most engines relay on keywords to deliver the result of online searches, Ask.com relay on a more human like question form algorithm to deliver its results, Mahalo.com on the other hand is a human-powered search site that relays more on human archiving rather than automated bot software, thus delivering less results but higher relevance quality. Another way to search the web is to use web search software rather than an online search engine, usually these are not provided for free, or are linked to corporate or academic institutions. Another way to search the web is to use search engines or even web browsers that are able to access the Deep Web. The deep web is the biggest part of the World Wide Web that contains the bulk of the information, but is usually un-indexed and thus normal search engines like Google cannot see it; this is why it is also called Invisible Web. Many online Libraries, Databases discussion groups and forums are not indexed and thus do not show on the regular search engines results. These are some Deep Web search engines that provides scientific and academic information:

Infomine: http://infomine.ucr.edu

The WWW Virtual Library: http://vlib.org

CompletePlanet: http:completeplanet.com

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Search Parameters

Almost all search engines (whether online or on computer) use by defaults what is known as the Boolean operators, or more commonly referred to as Boolean search. Older databases and engines from the 90s supported Full Boolean Logic search, sadly this is no longer the case with the modern engines, and the only major Search Engine that still support it are those created by Microsoft such as Bing and the associated search tools inside Outlook and Live products. Today the only search systems that use Full Boolean Logic (Other than Bing) are those within the educational, corporal or organisational institution‟s private electronic databases and Virtual Libraries, they are usually exclusive to either paid memberships or limited to members or students of the relevant institution or university. Modern search engines today use Implied Boolean Logic, that is, a limited and conditional Boolean search, alongside some proximity operators, wildcards and truncations; we will list the most common of these parameters:

OR use to be the default parameter in older search engines, when two or more words are typed in the search box the engine assumes OR operator between each word, it is used to broaden the research, this operator is no longer available in most modern engines that use the Implied Boolean logic:

o Example: „Heavy OR Metal OR Music‟ would return results that contain at least one of these topics such as weight, Metal industry or Music.

AND is the current default parameter of the modern search engines, can be also replaced by the „+‟ sign in many of them, this operator will narrow a search by combining terms. The search engine will return results with all the specified search terms:

o Example: „Heavy +Metal‟ will return results about either Heavy Metal industry or Heavy Metal music, to specify which results the user wish for, a third term can be added: „Heavy +Metal +Music‟ or „heavy AND metal AND music‟

NOT also replaced by the „-„ sign in many modern engines, it is used to narrow a search by excluding certain search terms:

o Example: „Metal NOT Iron‟ or „Metals -Iron‟ will exclude the Iron from the results on Metals elements.

Other Boolean operators also known as Proximity operators are rarely implemented in modern search engines and thus we will just cite them without explanation, these are:

NEAR

NOT NEAR

FOLLOWED BY

NOT FOLLOWED BY

FAR

SENTENCE

Almost all search engines uses the SENTENCE operator, but replace it with the use of the Quotation Marks: “” this will result in the search engine searching for the exact phrase as it is typed within the quotation marks. As for the other proximity operators, many engines use different formulas that are not related to the Boolean logic:

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“…as of November 2008, most Internet search engines only implement an implicit proximity search functionality. That is, they automatically rank those search results higher where the user keywords have a good "overall proximity score" in such results. If only two keywords are in the search query, this has no difference from an explicit proximity search which puts a NEAR operator between the two keywords. However, if three or more than three keywords are present, it is often important for the user to specify which subsets of these keywords expect a proximity in search results”

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Another set of operators are known as Wildcards and Truncation. The parameter symbols used for these operators vary from one system to another, but to define the terms, A wildcard replaces a single character, common symbols for single wildcards are $, ? and/or #. A truncation causes the system to retrieves all the words that start with the same letters as the truncated term, up to the point that the truncation symbol is used, the most common symbol for truncation is the asterisk *. Since the way these parameters vary considerably from one search engine to another, giving an example will not be accurate or possible unless we examine each engine‟s system. Another way to refine an online search is to use what is referred to as Nesting which is the use of parentheses (), these are used to refine the research using multiple Boolean operators in a specific way, if the system support Nesting it will search the operation inside the parentheses first then execute the operations outside them in the order they are entered, in other words “Nested terms work in the same manner as mathematical equations that include parentheses. Terms inside the parentheses are searched first, and then terms outside the parentheses are added to the search”5. It is to be noted that many modern search engines have a different use for the parentheses and not all use them for nesting, here is an example of how they are usually used when applicable:

(decision-making OR "decision making") and (gender OR sex) and (group*

OR team*) AND management

It is important to note also, that these are not standard systems anymore, a big

example is Google, the biggest and most used search engine on the internet, does

not use the Boolean Logic fully and has its own operators such as: allintext:,

allintitle:, define: as well Google uses different proximity operators for example

it replaces NEAR with AROUND(#) and uses a wildcard to determine the proximity

score.

Although using the search parameters within the search field box is the quickest

way to get the information desired, especially for users who do extensive

researches online, it is more efficient to use the Advanced Search tool that all

major online search engines provide; this is becoming more useful since the Advanced Search tool contain clear fields that state what to exclude, what to include

and how proximity should be applied, thus replacing partially or in full the need to

use Boolean Search.

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_search_(text)

5 http://www.tarleton.edu/departments/library/library_module/unit4/4nested_lm.html

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Online information Credibility

Assessing the credibility of online information and sources of information is by far the most important and time consuming part of an online research, although the process is similar to a regular extensive research that is done using the more conventional means through researching hard copy books and visiting libraries, it does take more effort to verify information online. The conventional research refers mostly to books, newspapers and hard copy institutional or governmental documents; the verification process is much easier: already by referring to public or institutional libraries and buying books from credible publishing houses and academic publications, the researcher is using mostly credible material. While online, the information that is collected has to be periodically and much more extensively evaluated and has to withstand intense scrutiny. Many articles and studies have been made in the academic fields of Information and Communication regarding online information credibility since the internet is becoming the major tool of research in the modern age. Following are the basic steps for information assessment needed for any research done online:

Authorship: It is very important that the researched material collected online have an identifiable author or group of authors. Whether a website or an article, if the author is anonymous then the information is hardly credible. When looking for information the researcher needs to look up the author and try to assess how credible he is through his credentials and/or his level of expertise in the field of his article, as well as the validity of his scientific and logical approaches.

Publishing body or publisher: Upon finding an article or a website, it is important to determine the origin of the document or collection of articles found, if the information is taken from an e-book, or a PDF or DOC files or any sort of document, the researcher must look up the original publishing body and check whether it is an established entity, with a good reputation within the field of the acquired information, and if it is trustworthy. If the original article is taken from a hard copy i.e. printed book or newsletter, usually it is more trustworthy than an article on a blog, since it requires more investment in the creation and publishing of the material (“How to Evaluate the Credibility of a Source,” n.d.6) if the publisher or publishing body is a website, it is important to check what sort of website it is, official government websites (.org), institutional sites that represent universities and educational agencies (.edu), non-profit organisations or respected organisations within specific area of expertise(.org) are usually credible sources. As well as Peer-reviewed Journals7 and reputable news sources.

Accuracy or verifiability: It is important that the information be verifiable and accurate, the most notable way to verify the accuracy of information is to check multiple sources for the same information and compare the results, usually if the information was identical in most sources, and those sources are identified as credible through their authorship and publisher, than the researcher can safely assert that the information is credible, the more resources found that generate

6 http://www.wikihow.com/Evaluate-the-Credibility-of-a-Source

7 A peer-reviewed journal is considered a reliable source because each article must undergo a rigorous

review process, with many professional reviewers involved. (“How to Evaluate the Credibility of a Source,” n.d.)

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similar findings the more credible is the information. Information found to be similar in two sources are less credible than information found in over six sources, likewise information found to be similar across twelve different sources are considered highly credible. If the website where the information is presented does include bibliography and/or citations related to that information, it is indicative of better credibility, these citations or bibliography can be used as well to compare the information.

Information Bias: When checking the information it is important to check if the author or publisher is objective or bias, this can be evident when looking up the authorship of the article, if the author is emotionally of financially connected to the subject of the information, or if he is representing a certain political or ideological or religious point of view, most likely the information is not completely objective and can be bias, depending on the type of research, bias information can be either overlooked, or considered not credible. As well it is important to check if the website presenting the information is founded or sponsored by a certain entity, this can indicate information bias, since “Various sources of funding can sway the information presented or the way a study is conducted in order to align with their own agendas” (“How to Evaluate the Credibility of a Source,” n.d.).

Source Consistency: When checking the consistency of an article, the researcher must make sure that the authors apply the same standards to those who agree and disagree with them, applying double or different standards is highly un-credible.

Information presentation: It is important to check if the website is formatted in a professional manner, websites with flashing emoticons and poorly designed pages indicate that the authors are not to be taken seriously, nor any information that they provide, as well mechanical errors such as grammatical mistakes and typos suggest that the authors might be careless in the way they present their information, and that affects their credibility (“Assessing the credibility of online sources,” n.d.8).

Information date: In most researches it is important that the information is up to date. In some fields, such as human sciences, including old material is important, but in both cases it is important to check the date the information was published, if no date exist then the information is hardly verifiable or credible. It is important to check if the website has been updated since the information was first published.Websites that has out-dated information and that is not being regularly updated indicate that the authors or publishers are no longer maintaining the site. Sites that are not maintained are not credible. In addition, out-dated websites hold the possibilitythat their references and links be broken and thus their information unverifiable.

8 http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-credibility/assessing-credibility-online-

sources.shtml

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Digital Information

Converting a hard copy into a soft copy

By definition a hard copy document, is any sort of document done in the real world, using paper or any printable sheet, these are documents such as books, newspapers, magazines, drawing, etc. in short any sort of printed material on sheets. A soft copy also known as a digital copy document is any sort of document used in the virtual world (internet) or on any computerised machine, whether it was a video editing console, an archiving mainframe computer, a personal computer, a tablet or a smartphone. In recent years it has become a common practice to transform all sorts of hard copy documents into soft copy, a process known as digital archiving, this is extremely important for researchers in any field and of any nature, whether academic, professional or casual. Through digital archiving it is now possible, as an example, for most people to access many newspapers online and read the original issues that were published 40, 50 or 60 years ago. In most cases the online document would be either a digitally scanned image of the newspaper, an enhanced interactive image of the newspaper, or a converted text. Following is a brief description of how to convert a hard copy into a digital soft copy:

Digital Scan

The major tool used to transform a hard document into a soft one is to have it digitally scanned and transformed into a binary coded file that a computer can understand, the user then can use a certain software product to retrieve and read or edit the file. The software depends on what format the digital copy was saved to. The most professional way to digitally scan a hard copy document is done by using a digital scanner, or a computer scanner, most commonly referred to as simply a scanner. Scanners have the ability to take a photo shot known as a snapshot of the physical document and transform it into a computer image, the most common formats of images are JPEG (.jpg) Bitmap (.bmp) GIF (.gif) PNG (.png) and TIFF (.TIF or .TIFF) although most modern scanners also support a variety of software oriented formats such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Coral Draw and other multi-platform software products. Scanners can vary from small commercial home scanners used with personal computers such as desktops, laptops and tablets, to advanced industrial scanners used in big publishing houses, academic institutions and industrial corporations. Ever since the mobile industry shifted more into computerising their products which resulted in what is known as smartphones, more practical, although somewhat less professional, means of transforming hard copied documents into digital formats became available through digital cameras, especially today with high resolution cameras that support over 3.1 megapixels.

Optical character recognition (OCR)

Digitally scanning a hard copy document is the only possible mean to transform it into a soft copy digitally formatted document or more accurately a digitally formatted image. Most of the time, this is exactly what is needed, especially if the document is a picture, a photo or a drawing, or if it is needed to archive old newspapers where credibility relies in the ability of reproducing

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an exact image of the original document. But in many other cases where the document is a typescript, or, rarely, a manuscript, it would be more practical to convert the document, not into an image format, but into a text format, such as a ASCII, ANSI or Unicode Text file also known as Plain Text files (.txt) Microsoft Word Document (.doc) Microsoft Office Open XML (.docx) and Portable Document Format created and largely associated, but not limited to, Adobe Systems (.PDF). Converting a hard copy text into a soft copy text makes it much easier and less time consuming to search the text, quote it, copy parts of it or edit it, and it can make the text available online as part of an e-book, or e-publication (where „e‟ stands for electronic). To be able to transform a hard copy text into a soft digitalised format one can use what is known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR for short) software, these are software that process digital images with typed (and sometimes handwritten) characters and create a digital text document out of the recognised characters in the image. OCR is not 100% accurate, and depending on the clarity of the text on the original digital image, the software can fail to recognise few, or more than just a few letters and characters. Different software products present different results; the accuracy varies from software to another but rarely ever exceeds 98% for clearly typed documents with modern fonts. The accuracy varies between 81% to 99% for older 19th and 20th century fonts used in newspapers for example, it falls way shorter than that when it comes to handwriting (Holley, 2009), yet OCR save time for the user, instead of manually retyping a text then edit it for typos and mistakes, the user can rely on OCR software to convert the text, he then can manually edit the mistakes and characters that the software misspelled or missed. To get the best results when using an OCR software it is best that the image would be scanned using 300 dpi resolution, higher resolutions doesn‟t seem to have much effect and can result in slower process time, but for fonts that are usually small (below 6 points) a higher resolution such as 600 dpi can be more efficient. Brightness settings of the image should be balanced and usually set to 50%. Page alignment is important when scanning the original document, as well as getting a clean scan i.e. without glitches and dust spots. Old and discoloured documents must be scanned with RGB mode for better results (“5.0 Best Practices for Optical Character Recognition,” n.d.). The accuracy of OCR software depends on how sophisticated the product is. Definitely one cannot expect free software to fare better than paid software; here is a list of the best rated free and paid OCR software products:

OCR Using Microsoft OneNote 2007 – Comes free with Microsoft Office

OCR Using Microsoft Office Document Imaging – Comes free with Microsoft Office

SimpleOCR – Free Software9

OmniPage – Rated #1 paid software

Presto! OCR – Rated #2 paid software10 Finally it is worth mentioning that there exist Optical Character Recognition Systems, these are a combination of Hardware and software that are specialised in converting hard copy documents and books to soft copies, in most cases these are standalone computer unites and not PC accessories, and are suited for bulk quantities.

9 (“Top 5 Free OCR Software Tools To Convert Images Into Text,<” http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-5-

free-ocr-software-tools-to-convert-your-images-into-text-nb/>) 10

(“OCR Software Review 2014 | OCR PDF Document Imaging | Optical Character Recognition Software,” <http://ocr-software-review.toptenreviews.com/>)

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Online Electronic Libraries

Until now, there isn‟t a unified or universal definition of what an electronic or digital library is. Many definitions range from database libraries stored on CDs and DVDs, to online archiving websites and what falls in between. “An informal definition of a digital library is a managed collection of information, with associated services, where the information is stored in digital formats and accessible over a network” although there is no unified definition for what an electronic library is a “unifying theme is that information is organized on computers and available over a network, with procedures to select the material in the collections, to organize it, to make it available to users, and to archive it” (Arms, 2001). There is however some misconceptions when it comes to what people think of an electronic library, for example not all libraries are online, and some are only available by accessing a certain association or institute or university intranet (an internal network within the boundaries of the institution). While “It is true that an electronic library is aimed at making it possible for anyone, at any time or place, to access digitized resources over the Internet. It is only natural, however, that the contents which can be used over an electronic library are limited to those contents which have been digitized at the library so they can be relayed through a network. The process of digitization is a major one, involving much labor and expense.” (“Electronic Library Projects | National Diet Library,” n.d.11) As well “digital library collections are not limited to document surrogates: they extend to digital artifacts that cannot be represented or distributed in printed formats.” (Stern, 1999). The best definition I have found online for what a Digital, Virtual or Electronic Library is was the one found on Ask.com:

‘E- Library refers to all the library resources that are available online through computers and data bases. This is different from the open internets because E- Libraries have restricted access.’

-“What Is E Library?” www.ask.com/question/what-is-e-library

Basically most major universities have an online Electronic Library that is accessible to their affiliated students and researchers, there are three online databases and Libraries in the Lebanese university, one in Arabic and two in English, here are the English electronic databases/library links:

http://www.ul.edu.lb/ul/eresources/default.aspx

http://hip.ul.edu.lb/web/guest/welcome Here are other examples of online Libraries for university institutions and other online research centres: Sorbonne University e-library: http://www.sudoc.abes.fr Oxford University e-library: http://www.ox.ac.uk/research/libraries/ APA Online Library: http://www.apa.org/education/undergrad/library-research.aspx Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO): http://www.scielo.org/ National Science Digital Library: http://www.nsdl.org Wiley Online Library: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/

11 http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/aboutus/elib-project.html

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One of the most common online libraries and academic resources is Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/

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Finding Scholarships Online

In most Lebanese universities, similar to anywhere in the world, the University itself provides partial or full scholarships for their top students to travel and continue their studies abroad, the Lebanese University does this almost every year and grant a scholarship in each faculty to one or two students with the highest GPA. But most students do not realise that there is an endless wealth of information about scholarship offers, financial aid, and even many resources to help student apply and get a scholarship, this ranges from tips and tutorials about how to write a scholarship application, to finding a proper scholarship according to the students input and help them through the whole process. A simple search on any search engine with the keywords “scholarship search services” will display a long list of websites that offer scholarship services, although sometimes the research needs to be more specified. As a rule of thumb almost every established university in Europe, Asia and America has a scholarship program, in most cases one only needs to go to the desired university website and check for available scholarships and students exchange programs. Here is an example, if students want to find if there is an opportunity in Nottingham University in the UK, all they have to do is go to the university website and look for the scholarship webpage which can be found here: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/internationalstudents/scholarshipsfeesfinance/scholarships/index.aspx . Other than individually looking for availability in each university online, a student can use a scholarship search service from many websites that provide it, although more than half of these websites are primary addressed to students from the U.S.A. there still exist a lot of information and many of these websites offer their services on an international scale. The most prominent of these websites is FastWeb.com not only does this website allow the student to create a profile, input what he is exactly looking for and do the search for him and present him with a list of available scholarships, it also has a lot of information and tips on how to secure a scholarship and many tools to use when applying. Unfortunately FastWeb.com is just for US citizens or people living inside U.S.A., although one can benefit from the tools on Fastweb.com a Lebanese student cannot apply there, here are other similar sites that support international students applications:

FindAPhD: Inside Europe http://www.findaphd.com/funding/postgraduate-phd-scholarships/

Postgraduate Studentships: Inside UK and Europe http://www.postgraduatestudentships.co.uk

ScholarshipDb.Net: A global scholarship search Database http://scholarshipdb.net/

Academics.com: Scholarships and academic research jobs in Germany http://www.academics.com

Edupass.org: International scholarships to study in the USA http://www.edupass.org/

International Student: Scholarships in U.S.A. U.K. and Australia http://www.internationalstudent.com/

British Council: for British government supported Scholarships in the UK http://www.educationuk.org/global/articles/scholarships-financial-support/

This is by no mean a comprehensive list; a student can search within each country to find an online scholarship service that can help.

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Some online Search Engines such as Yahoo! Directories offer a search tool specifically for Scholarships12. One of the good search website designed for all sorts of Scholarships from all countries, is Scholarship-Position.com http://scholarship-positions.com where students can browns scholarship offereds by countries, or they can even search for scholarship that is offered to developing countries, which Lebanon is a part of. Another major website that focuses on scholarships for developing countries, is the website Scholarship for Development http://www.scholars4dev.com/ it acts as a search engine for scholarships and has search refining tools, it is by far the most comprehensive lists of Scholarships adjustable to all sorts of search quarries, the pictures below show a snapshot to a refined search of Scholarships for “Lebanese People” which can be found here: http://www.scholars4dev.com/tag/scholarships-for-lebanese-people

12http://dir.yahoo.com/business_and_economy/shopping_and_services/education/financial_aid/scholarshi

p_search_services/

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Finally a good way to get scholarships is to find NGOs or Governmental Organisations that offers it, but usually these scholarships are not provided online, Government Organisations such as UNESCO, USAID and EUA need not be contacted in their offices in Lebanon, though it is possible to contact them through their respective websites online. Another source of Scholarships are provided through the local Lebanese NGOs, again in most cases these NGOs must be contacted on a personal level though most of them provide a way of contact through their websites, in this link are found links to Lebanese NGOs that offer scholarship: http://lebanon.thebeehive.org/en/content/33/2152 It is to be noted that while Google, Yahoo! and Bing are among the biggest search engines on the internet, it is recommended that while searching for scholarships online that the user or student uses a Deep Web search engine, the main reason is that most of the big regular search engines uses an system referred to as “Data Mining”, mainly started by Google to “personalise user search”, this means that these engines use an algorithm that monitors the user‟s searching and browsing habits, using what is known as “cookies”, so when a person search for any keyword on these engines the result page will be customised to bring “the most relevant information to the user” this can result in missing on many links in the search, or having important links appearing in much later pages due to personalised research effect, thus using a Deep Web or Invisible Web search engine provides better plus un-indexed results, which means more relevant results than the normal web search engine.

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