In recent years, European governments and funders, universities and academic societies have increasingly discovered the digital humanities as a new and exciting field that promises new discoveries in humanities research. The funded projects are, however, often ad hoc experiments and stand in isolation from other national and international work. What is lacking is an infrastructure to leverage these pioneering projects into systematic investigations, with methods and technical environments that can be taken up by others. The editors of this special issue are both directors of Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH), which aims to set up a virtual bridge between the many digital arts and humanities projects across Europe. DARIAH is being developed with an understanding that infrastructure does not need to imply a seemingly generic and neutral set of technologies, but should be based upon communities.