This paper presents a collaborative research project involving institutional partners from primary schools, a public library, the Ministry of Education and an education research faculty. This collaboration was established in order to co-create literacy teaching activities unfolding in digital contexts on site at the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec. The main objective was to address the lack of access to educational resources for pupils from disadvantaged communities. To do so, we collaboratively conceptualized and implemented curricular innovations taking advantage of technological means and digital contents in various school subjects. The conceptual framework of this project is based on theories of social semiotics, digital literacy and multimodality. We have adopted a design-based research methodology which support pedagogical innovations in our respective fields of expertise: language didactics, history-geography and visual arts education. Our analysis allows us to take a critical look at what reinforces or hinders collaborative didactic designs. Our results show the importance of identifying the roles of each partner and supervising the co-creation process as well as offering training and vulgarized research documentation to professional partners.