National Agricultural Library

The Agricultural College Editor

U.S. Department of Agriculture

Office of Cooperative Extension Work

Bulletins and newspapers have been prominently recognized for many years as means of supplying agricultural information. Only recently, however, have administrators realized that the preparation of information for popular use requires the services of a trained specialist - a specialist not only with a facility for explaining scientific facts in plain, readable, accurate language, but with breadth of view, an aptitude for organization, and a keen and accurate understanding of human nature. In the earlier days all too many thousands of printed pages that were for the most part unintelligible to the man whom they wore designed to influence were scattered over the countryside. Experiment station and college publications too often failed to present the results of research in clear, concise, practical terms. Scientists, although preeminent in their particular fields of research, were seldom expert publicists. What was needed was a person who could rescue the practical facts from obscuring and unfamiliar scientific terminology and impart them to farmers in language to which they were accustomed. The editor, as a connecting link between the man who knows and the man who wishes to know, supplied this need.

Extension Service Circular

Number 181