Hey tungsten,
I am part of an emerging multi-cultural open XML/XPath/XQuery community at xquery.me .
We do some fancy fully open source libraries in xquery (e.g. we have a library for interfacing with Amazon web services in 100% XQuery code -> see https://github.com/dknochen/xaws ).
If you want to contribute a library I could provide a simple idea, plus some help. A simple library implementation is not hard to do and brings a lot of fun. And of course, you will get the full credit & fame for it :).
what do you think? Just drop me a PM if you are interested...
best wishes,
Dennis