If you're a member of an organization or a church in Cherokee County -- and most of you are! -- then we hope you'll take a few moments to read this. It could mean the difference between our "getting the facts straight," and your going ballistic when we don't!

Every January, the Press produces one of our most popular supplements, which we call the Fact Book. This year, it's slated for publication in the Wednesday, Jan. 30 edition. This supplement is a "keeper," meaning it can languish in your home until we update it the next year, and you can use it as a handy reference guide.

But the Fact Book contains literally hundreds of individual listings. The churches alone number between 120 and 130 each year, and we include a similar number of organizations. And updating them every year is quite an undertaking.

Some of the listings -- like the area schools and their hierarchies, for example -- are relatively straightforward. Schools rarely move in a physical sense, and typically, board members change only to the tune of maybe one per year per school. And if school officials themselves change, we're likely to know already, because the schools usually contact us.

Organizations and churches are a different matter. Almost every organization changes its president or contact person every year, and very few let us know when this happens. (And sometimes, even when they do tell us, we'll print that in the paper, and then later forget what we knew!) That means we have to touch base with someone who's a member of every organization to get the proper listings. Also, meeting dates and times tend to change from year to year, and this can be a problem as well.

You'd think a church might be more stable in terms of data than an organization, but that's not always true. When a pastor changes, we're even more unlikely to hear about it. And churches (around here, anyway) often change locations, service times and phone numbers. Another tendency in these parts is for part of a congregation to split off from another, and form a separate church. Or, occasionally, congregations will fold into another church. Neither of these cases is likely to be reported to us. But the biggest stumbling block to checking the facts on churches is simply that many of them do not have phones, and when they do, they are rarely answered -- mainly because smaller congregations can't afford to staff their offices. Even if we know the name of the pastor (which we often don't), he may live outside the Tahlequah area, or he may also not have a phone.

The most common problem these days in updating our Fact Book, though, has to do with cell phones. Many pastors and club members now have those instead of "land lines," and we have no way of getting these numbers. But neither do we want to publish incomplete or erroneous material in our Fact Book, which many people have told us they depend upon as a reference tool.

So, we need your help! If you're a member of a Cherokee County organization or church, please make sure we have our facts straight. We'd rather not field calls from every member of every club or congregation, but we do hope you'll tell your pastor or organization president to give us a call, or offer to make the call yourself.

For churches, we need the name, address and phone number of your church and/or pastor; the pastor's name; and your service times -- on Sunday, and on any other time (such as Wednesday) you deem pertinent.

For organizations, we'd like to have the name of your group; the location, dates and times of your meetings; and the name and phone number of your president or another contact person. (Please be specific as to your contact person's title.)

We would prefer to get this information by e-mail at news@tahlequahdailypress.com. If that's not possible, call our newsroom clerk, Josh Newton, at 456-8833, ext. 20, between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. weekdays. (You may leave a message if he doesn't answer.) Your deadline is 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 21.

If you know of someone who needs to see this information, please pass it on. We want to get everything right for you!