This keynote reflects on some of the barriers to digitised parliamentary resources achieving greater impact as research tools in political history and political science. As well as providing a view on researchers’ priorities for resource enhancement, I also argue that one of the main challenges for historians and political scientists is simply establishing how to make best use of these datasets through asking new research questions and through understanding and embracing unfamiliar and controversial methods than enable their analysis. I suggest parliamentary resources should be designed and presented to support pioneers trying to publish in often sceptical and traditional fields.