This paper proposes an approach for helping data scientists express queries that can help them understand the content of raw data collections. The proposal is based on query rewriting techniques that given an initial query they can provide sets of queries that can help data scientists to better exploit data collections. We apply our approach in the context of the project Exploring the History of Climate Change in Latin America through Newspaper Articles funded by the Panamerican Institute of Geography and History (PAIGH) where data scientists explore newspapers to track articles reporting climatologic events.