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Scientists nose out clue to preserving books: their smell
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Book News
 14 Nov 2009, 13:40 #76368 Reply To Post

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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taggie01
 13 Jan 2010, 08:18 #80049 Reply To Post
I once heard an I/V between a conservitor with a fabulously outgoing personality and an Australian Broadcasting Corporation interviewer talking for 15 minutes about the amazing smell that books have.
To both the talent and the interviewer, it was why e-books, kindles et al will never work for them. It is part of the sensory nature of reading: sight, touch, sound (the crack of binding and the whisper of pages turning) and smell.

Have to say I agree . . . I LOVE the smell of paper.
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