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
Dusty books
A little heavy on the vanilla, maybe? ... Dusty books on a shell. Photograph: Getty

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.

His team investigated 72 books from the 19th and 20th centuries, pinning the smell down to the several hundred volatile organic compounds (VOCs) "off-gassing" from the paper as it ages. "The aroma of an old book is familiar to every user of a traditional library," they wrote. "A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents."

Working in collaboration with curators from the National Archive in the Netherlands, they then identified the 15 most abundant VOCs, and used these to identify degradation markers which can be used to monitor the condition of ageing books by analysing the gasses they produce, without damaging the books themselves.

They hope the research will be used to help libraries and museums preserve their libraries. "There is more work needed to develop an application which would work outside the laboratory. However, we are optimistic," said Strlic.

The research, a joint project with partners from the UK, the Netherlands and Slovenia, was announced in the journal Analytical Chemistry.

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