The last 20 years has seen an increase in the number of collaborative humanities and social science research projects, but the software to support our inter-institutional collaborations are only just starting to catch up with this new research reality. This talk introduces some of the challenges of siloed institutional digital collaboration infrastructure, and offers a first-hand account of the needs of several collaborative research teams. It concludes with an outline of the way that the Canadian HSS Commons meets some of these needs and explores some further paths forward.

1. building community
2. digital communities
3. digital humanities
4. digital knowledge commons
5. digital research commons
6. digital research communities
7. digital research infrastructure
8. Humanities and Social Sciences

This keynote talk was part of the Building Digital Communities in the Humanities and Social Sciences: DHSI event, which took place on June 7, 2023, during the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria. The Building Digital Communities in the Humanities and Social Sciences event series was supported by a Connection Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, as well as the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, the Implementing New Knowledge Environments Partnership, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Érudit, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network, Iter, and the Humanities Data Lab. The Canadian HSS Commons team is also very grateful to the scholarly societies that supported and participated in the Building Digital Communities event at the 2023 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences.