Labov shares her experience with Stanford’s Humanities Lab (http://humanitieslab.stanford.edu/admin/directory.html), Beyond Search (https://beyondsearch.stanford.edu/) and Stanford Literary Lab (http://litlab.stanford.edu/) as examples of how digital humanities labs can address issues involved in working with humanities big data. These initiatives are explored as examples of how such efforts to bring a humanities community together can work (or not). Labov suggests three lessons to be learned from Stanford’s experience: there is a risk in developing digital humanities spaces and equipment stores which are not solidly based in viable research projects, that more successful efforts are built around researchers and their existing work and interests and that an institution needs to let these environments evolve as communities and community centers.