This paper examines the role of digital collections in scholarly communications and the needs of scholars as they build digital scholarship projects and scholarly networks for digital humanities research. Through a comprehensive analysis of the data drawn from a survey and interviews of humanities scholars and faculty, this paper explores how scholars use digital collections as part of their exchange of ideas in research and in teaching. Through discussion of the needs for library-researcher collaborations, digital literacies, and building shared ecosystems for inter-project communications, this paper ultimately will explore how scholars need robust scholarly communications systems and virtual collaboratories in order to advance digital humanities research.