Customization costs are borne by individual services. The Virtual Reference Desk Project offers training with the software and server space at no cost. The Incubator allows patrons asking questions to browse the AskA service s Web site for resources and archived questions in a subject directory or search the site by keyword. A sidebar section provides highlighted links that appear on all pages. The administrator maintains the content and linking for the site.
Experts can also access the public view.
Figure 1 illustrates the organization of the categories on the main page. This page is created and edited by the administrator using a user-friendly tool in the administrative view. Editing in each section is easily done in the administrative view. The resources section may be used to list Web sites or other types of resources. The resources appearing in Figure 3 are AskA services related to the sub-category oceanography.