In this paper, I discuss some of the more salient intellectual and technological dimensions of work over the past year, focused on developing an open source knowledge creation, management and publication system. In key respects, our work seeks to anticipate developments in national collaborative e-research infrastructure over the next five or so years. Especially in view of recent statements on innovation policy by the Australian government, we can expect the next five or so years will see significant advances in the development of online knowledge repositories for not only more complex kinds of quantitative research data, but also for qualitative data in rich and diverse media forms that will offer new possibilities for humanities research. We will also see improved or new middleware, allowing Australian research communities in the humanities collaboratively to create, share and interrogate new knowledge of cultural and social phenomena. However, if humanities researchers are to exploit these and other possible advances in digital research infrastructure, then what they will also need are 'tools' enabling the creation, reception and use of knowledge that these infrastructural advances can put into intellectual circulation. They will need the means of using networked digital technologies as primary media for research, and to publish their findings as complex multimedia artifacts.