This paper describes and reflects on the evolution of the South Seas Project, a collaborative research venture between the National Library of Australia and the Center for Cross-Cultural Research that involves the production of World Wide Web-based hypermedia resources on the history of European exploration and cross-cultural encounter in the Pacific, between approximately 1700 and 1840. Highlights include: background on how the project came about; funding; ensuring that the digital resources created could be managed within the Library's projected framework for collecting, managing, and delivering information resources in digital forms; the importance of creating resources in forms that can be integrated with other Web-based research; comparison with print materials; accuracy of quotations and references; problems with digital resources, including fragility and the difficulty of confirming accuracy and authenticity; other digital library projects focused on the production of editions of historical texts; and development of a content management and publications system that will ensure the project's resources are produced in conformity to those modes of encoding and describing historical documents that are gaining greatest currency with major research libraries and cultural institutions. (Contains 19 references.) (MES)