Twenty doctoral students from the School of Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas met in the summer of 2005 to complete a seminar and online course on "Online Information Services." The class offered the perfect research settings with 10 practicing school librarians and 10 practitioners from other areas of the library world. Each team recorded their experiences in developing a virtual reference service or in exploring a particular challenge in offering virtual reference services, such as evaluation and training needs, all on a limited budget. Linworth Publishing generously offered to record the case studies discussed at the seminar in its book "Virtual Reference on a Budget: Case Studies" (2007). This article describes several strategies conceptualized by the doctoral students in implementing virtual references on a budget.