A significant part of your grade this semester is the creation of a web site that utilized XML as a basis for delivering content to the web. What's important here is not that you finish every single detail; more important is providing an overall framework on which you exhibit your understanding of multiple concepts discussed in this class.
Yes, your project is worth a significant portion of your grade. So take it seriously. That being said, I want you to have fun with it. I really don't mind what you choose to do it on, or what data you choose to use for your XML source data.
If you are familiar with JavaScript, then my expectation is for you to use JavaScript to access the XML Document Object Model. By doing so, you can manipulate (filter, sort, etc.) the XML elements and attributes, and dynamically display various subsets of the XML content according to various selection criteria requested by the web client.
If you are not familiar with JavaScript, then my expectation is for you to use various XSLT documents to perform the XML data filtering and/or sorting, etc. In addition, you can use various techniques (shown in examples) to dynamically load various XSLT documents that can transform a single XML data source. As such you can create dynamic output from the same XML content.
Although we will not cover the DOM and various dynamic concepts until the end of the semester, it is imperative for you to begin formulating your site design and building your source XML data source file(s) with the DTD or XSD validation part.