diff --git a/src/scratchpad/ooxml-src/org/apache/poi/hssf/model/SharedStringsTable.java b/src/scratchpad/ooxml-src/org/apache/poi/hssf/model/SharedStringsTable.java
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..d97454b01
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/scratchpad/ooxml-src/org/apache/poi/hssf/model/SharedStringsTable.java
@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+/* ====================================================================
+   Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
+   contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file distributed with
+   this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
+   The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
+   (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
+   the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at
+
+       http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+
+   Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+   distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+   WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+   See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+   limitations under the License.
+==================================================================== */
+
+package org.apache.poi.hssf.model;
+
+import java.io.IOException;
+import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.util.LinkedList;
+
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
+import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
+import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
+
+import org.openxml4j.opc.PackagePart;
+import org.w3c.dom.Document;
+import org.w3c.dom.Element;
+import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
+import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
+
+
+public class SharedStringsTable extends LinkedList<String> {
+
+    private static final String MAIN_SML_NS_URI = "http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main";
+
+    /** XXX: should have been using an XMLBeans object, but it cannot parse the sharedStrings schema, so we'll use DOM temporarily.
+    CTSst sst;
+    */
+
+    private PackagePart part;
+
+    private DocumentBuilderFactory builderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
+    
+    private DocumentBuilder parser;
+    
+    public SharedStringsTable(PackagePart part) throws IOException {
+        this.part = part;
+        InputStream is = part.getInputStream();
+        try {
+            builderFactory.setNamespaceAware(true);
+            this.parser = builderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
+            readFrom(is);
+        } catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
+            throw new RuntimeException(e);
+        } catch (SAXException e) {
+            throw new RuntimeException(e);
+        } finally {
+            if (is != null) is.close();
+        }
+
+
+    }
+
+    public void readFrom(InputStream is) throws IOException, SAXException {
+        Document doc = parser.parse(is);
+        Element root = doc.getDocumentElement();
+        NodeList sis = root.getElementsByTagNameNS(MAIN_SML_NS_URI, "si");
+        for (int i = 0 ; i < sis.getLength() ; ++i) {
+            Element si = (Element) sis.item(i);
+            NodeList ts = si.getElementsByTagNameNS(MAIN_SML_NS_URI, "t");
+            String t = "";
+            if (ts.getLength() > 0 && ts.item(0).getFirstChild() != null) {
+                t = ts.item(0).getFirstChild().getNodeValue();
+                add(t);
+            }
+        }
+    }
+}