The Google n-gram project is an example of how one might extract useful information by indexing large numbers of documents.<p>You might, for example, look at trends in the use of a given scientific instrument, or with a bit of NP, when the field switched from using &quot;computer&quot; to mean a machine instead of a person.<p>It was an eye-opener to see how gendered the scientific papers were in the 1960s, where the scientist is invariably a &quot;he&quot; and the secretary&#x2F;typist is a &quot;she&quot;. Some simple questions I have are: how have those trends changed over time? Is it different for different subfields?<p>It&#x27;s impossible to do that on my own when the papers cost even $1 per copy.