Editor's Page

Greetings, and welcome to the first JOE issue of 2001.

Permission Requests

In the April and August 2000 issues, I referred to the fact that "JOE works." One of the best proofs is the requests I get for permission to use or reproduce JOE articles. Since the last issue was published at the end of December, I've received and granted six such requests.

One came the morning after the issue was posted. It was from an Extension educator in my own state of Indiana who wanted to use excerpts from a December article in his county newsletter.

When I grant requests (always, of course, requiring credit to JOE and to the authors), I "CC" the lead author of the article in question as a courtesy. Well, this time that courtesy was repaid fast. Almost immediately, the author e-mailed my Purdue colleague and attached even more information for him to use. It doesn't get much better than that.

The other requests? One was from a reader who wanted to use a Commentary from an earlier issue in a "think piece" for new Extension educators in his state on the "value of JOE."

Another came from the research manager of a childcare agency in Texas who wanted to modify and administer a checklist published in a JOE article as part of a study the agency is doing.

Perhaps the most interesting came just this month from a reader in Turkey. He requested permission to translate an article on marketing and submit it to a Turkish academic journal, crediting JOE and the original authors, and identifying himself as the translator.

When I grant the requests I receive (and I grant most of them), I usually tell people that "that's what JOE is 'there for,' after all." It's true.

JOE is "there" to serve as a means of professional development for Extension professionals. It's "there" as a way to share information and the results of research among Extension professionals. And it's "there" to share that information and those results even farther.

This Month's Issue

For more on how "JOE works" and why we want to make it work even better, read the Commentary "The Challenge of Extension Scholarship." Extension scholarship is a challenge. As its author explains, we must "continue to meet the needs of Extension professionals and to demonstrate our relevance to both higher education and the public."

There are also several "pairings" in this month's issue. The Commentary "Keeping a Traditional Program-Delivery Method in an 'E' World" and the Tools of the Trade (actually a kind of Commentary, itself) "Building Working Relationships in Agricultural Marketing" talk about the importance of our sometimes-overlooked responsibility to help our clients become more skilled at building and maintaining relationships.

The Feature Articles "EDUFAIM: A Successful Program Helping Empower Rural Families Toward Self-Reliance" and "Individual Development Accounts: The Path to a Dream" discuss ways to help low-income families become more self-reliant and increase their financial security.

One Tools of the Trade, "Field Tours--An Old Tool That Can Still Work," offers a simple timeline and checklist to help organizers organize more efficiently. Another, "Questionnaires for Evaluating On-Farm Field Days," offers useful information to help us find out if and how field tours and field days "really work."

But that's less than half of the articles in this month's issue. I haven't even mentioned my favorite.

Laura Hoelscher, Editor