The Monday “What have you done lately?” accountability post, where I announce my program promotion goal for the week and fess up on last week’s goal.

Last week, my goal was to contact the Children’s Book Council about the Needle and Thread: Stitching for Literacy program and annual Bookmark Challenge.

I spent a lot of time hunting for an actual person to contact. The Web site doesn’t list (to the best of my knowledge) individual employees of the organization, and I hate to just fill out the general information request form. I found a name on a press release that wasn’t from a third party organization–her address is cbcbooks.org–and so I sent my e-letter to her. If I don’t hear back from her, and there’s really no reason I should, maybe I’ll drop a hard copy in the mail. Although, again, if I don’t have a specific person to contact…

Maybe I’ll call and get a name if I don’t get a response.

See? This stuff isn’t easy. But I did attempt my One Thing for the week.

This week, I’m going to compose a letter to independent shop owners to get more of them on board. Hmm…actually, I changed my mind. This week I’ll update the Challenge Kit with 2009 materials, so that when I contact shop owners I can refer them to it. That’s kind of more than one thing, but we’ll see what I can do.

I will also contact the American Library Association as Anna suggested. That will be fairly easy since I can simply re-vamp the CBC letter. Although I still have to figure out who to contact. You don’t happen to know anyone there, do you, Anna?

That’s not getting me closer to One Thing only, but you know how I love lofty goals.

And finally, one more accountability tidbit.

That is my vote-by-mail ballot. It’s going out today.