Wow - Utah must be the most RSS-ified state in the Union. Check out all of the following feeds they make available to their agencies and citizens (as noted at NewsIsFree):

• Utah and National Public Library News.
  "A collection of Utah and National public library news articles, updated dailly."
   
• Ferret Newsletter
  "Web sites of interest to Utah State Agencies. Web sites are chosen for their information on Internet/Technology, Business/Employment, Education, Government, Legal, Health/Science and other topics."
   
• The Best Information on the Net
  "These are the Internet training and workshops provided by the Utah State Library Division for Utah librarians and state agency information professionals. Registration works best using either Internet Explorer or Netscape 6+."
   
• Training for Utah State Agency Web Content Providers
  "The Utah Government Information Locator Service (gilsUtah!) offers agency and government employees free training in Internet searching; metatagging; and best practices in Web design..."
   
• Utah Government Information
  "Popular and Newsworthy information from and about Utah government sources."

I've noted their RSS Tutorial in the past, but it's exciting to see them walking the walk and implementing RSS so widely. In fact, I haven't been back to their tutorial in a while, and I'm pleased to see that they've expanded it to showcase a range of working examples of RSS feeds in action to drive the point home. They're also keeping it current (as evidenced by the inclusion of Technorati and Popdex), and I even found a new service that I haven't seen before - Morton Frederickson's Syndication Subscription Service. I like Morton's "subscribe" buttons more than the ubiquitous white-on-orange XML buttons because they actually carry some meaning for laypersons. This has easily become the single most valuable RSS resource page for tracking RSS, and I will definitely be checking back with it more often, as well as highlighting it in all of my presentations.

Naturally I am most stoked by the library news feed (major fabu-ness), but check out the fantastic training provided by the Utah State Library. Workshops include the aforementioned Publish & Syndicate Your News to the Web, Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization, Make Your Sites Accessible and Section 508 Compliant, Find Government Information Resources, Metatagging and Metabrowser (the software they're using for their GILS project), Searching RSS Channels for News, and even just general internet training. Heck, I wish *I* could attend some of these!

Utah will surely miss Phil Windley, as illustrated by the following statement in the Publish & Subscribe workshop description:

"The emphasis will be the practical application of RSS XML/RDF metadata endorsed by the state CIO for dynamic content publishing."

Utah's govtech people seem to be working much more closely with the Utah State Library than Illinois' govtech people are with the Illinois State Library. Even though they do a fantastic job here, the folks at the ISL are under-funded, overwhelmed, creative, innovative, and under-appreciated. Utah is implementing much of what I've been advocating for in Illinois, so at least I have a proof-of-concept to actually show others in Illinois now. Bravo to them!