The key curatorial challenge for the elmcity project is not to discover existing feeds, because few exist, but to show stakeholders how and why to create and publish them. I am wondering if student librarians can be deployed, on a project basis, to evangelize for creation of such feeds, and/or to wrangle them into existence themselves. My notion is that they could a) learn key principles of social information management and computational thinking, b) apply them to produce a tangible civic good, and c) earn credit for doing so. - Jon Udell

A wonderful idea, exactly the kinds of things that librarians love to do. I don't currently have a direct connection to student librarians per se, but I am in touch with the library community in general. I also still have some connection to my former library school professors. I am happy to evangelize as I can. - Inward Cologne

Jon, that's a great idea! Given the increasing ease with which data streams can be spliced and diced on the web and given the role that public libraries in particular can play in helping stitch together a local physical and local online communities, it makes sense look to the library world for help with curating local calendars. Library school students (which is the term used most commonly) in particular could use a calendar curation project as a great way to learn computational thinking, which I think is an essential skill in this plug-and-play, pub/sub web 2.0 (someday-to-be web 3.0) world librarians inhabit these days. - Stephen Francoeur

OK, sounds feasible. Now I need to find somebody who can actually do it, and create a reference model for others to follow. If you -- or someone you know -- is interested, let's discuss and move forward. - Jon Udell