We’d propose to give a presentation related to the topics ‘International cooperation and collaboration’ and ‘Sustaining digital archival infrastructures’. In our paper we would reflect on the experiences of developing the EHRI portal from a human perspective: For EHRI connecting archives has been and still is about connecting people. The project ties together professionals in archiving, in information technology and history. Though this cooperation is not always easy and semantic incomprehension is often a risk, we think that it is this multidisciplinary collaboration between professionals working at various institutions and infrastructures that makes the project a success. In our contribution to the APEX conference we intent to illustrate our experiences with pragmatic examples and solutions taken from the first phase of EHRI (2010-2015) and challenges that we are likely to face during the continuation of the project (2015-2019).