COLUMBUS, Ohio — People who have questions on topics ranging from gardening and crop production to personal finance and youth programs now have a new “Ask a County Expert” resource from The Ohio State University extension.

“The whole idea is to make our information more accessible and expand our scope,” said Jerry Thomas, leader of innovation and change for the OSU Leadership Center for the departments of extension and Agriculture Communication, Education and Leadership.

“The ‘Ask an Expert’ tool makes it much easier for clientele to ask us questions directly,” he explained. “If a county doesn’t have that particular expertise, we can access extension personnel across the state and across the country. It will really help us leverage our resources.”

Thomas said the question service helps extension keep up with people’s use of technology.

“Ohio State University extension and our director, Dr. Keith Smith, realized that we needed to extend OSU extension to where our audiences find and consume needed information,” he said. “That is increasingly online, so we wanted to make it easy for them to submit questions and find solutions right from our webpages.”

Each of Ohio’s 88 counties has a website, where people can find the question link. To find one, type the name of the county in a browser, followed by .osu.edu

For example, the extension office in Seneca County is http://seneca.osu.edu and the county office in Miami County is http://miami.osu.edu

When someone submits a question, it goes first to a central location, and is then directed to the person with the expertise to best answer it. “Most of us don’t know what questions we will have until we have an issue to address,” Thomas said. “We hope people use this as a starting point to reach a solution.”

Common questions to extension personnel involve home lawn and garden, agriculture, natural resources, family and home issues such as nutrition, diabetes and family budgeting, as well as 4-H and youth development programs and community development issues such as economic development, land use, leadership development and entrepreneurship.

“For northern Ohio, we also deal with issues about Lake Erie,” Thomas said.

Questions answered will become part of “frequently asked questions” on national network eXtension, at www.extension.org

The tool was developed by the national eXtension team and is being funded by all of the extension services in the United States. The team fosters collaboration to develop research and educational materials, provide professional development for extension professionals and develop tools to help extension work differently.

The Ask an Expert online tool arrives during the 150th anniversary of the Morrill Act of 1862.