Culturomics

Librarians have had a sometimes contentious relationship with the Google Books project. However, having this wealth of information in digital format is a great boon to various types of research. One emerging field is Culturomics, tracking and evaluating "human culture through time" via the published linguistic record. You can read this article for more information, or try it out yourself with this search interface.

I started out with a simple search comparing the popularity of vanilla and chocolate. Chocolate always wins, natch. Then I did another search, adjusting the time span to the late 20th Century, to see who was mentioned more: The Beatles or the Rolling Stones. The Beatles won. You can also input longer phrases; switch from "English" to "American English" or "English Fiction"; or try out Chinese, German, Russian, French, or Spanish. The search is case-sensitive, however, and plural forms or alternate spellings of words aren't taken into account.

One interesting search I did was boy vs. girl. While both words decline in usage around 1950, "girl" permanently overtakes "boy" in 1970. I'll leave it to the linguists and social scientists to figure that one out.