Scientists nose out clue to preserving books: their smell
The complex perfume of ageing books has been broken down into its component chemicals by research that could assist conservators
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The dusty smell of old books is one of the joys of visiting secondhand bookshops, and now scientists, who have identified it as combining "grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness", hope it can be used to help preserve valuable ageing titles.
Researcher Matija Strlic, from University College London's Centre for Sustainable Heritage, decided to investigate the smell of old books after spotting a book expert sniffing a title to assess its age. "I noticed a conservator once who was smelling paper to assess its quality – and having seen that and knowing that the analysis of food aroma is a routine analytical problem, I decided to look for correlations between paper composition and its smell. And it worked," he said.
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