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A 'Historic Book Odour Wheel' which has been developed to document and archive the aroma associated with old books, is being presented in a study in the open access journal Heritage Science. Researchers at UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage created the wheel as part of an experiment in which they asked visitors to St Paul's Cathedral's Dean and Chapter library in London to characterize its smell.
The visitors most frequently described the aroma of the library as 'woody' (selected by 100% of the visitors who were asked), followed by 'smoky' (86%), 'earthy' (71%) and 'vanilla' (41%). The intensity of the smells was assessed as between 'strong odor' and 'very strong odor'. Over 70% of the visitors described the smell as pleasant, 14% as 'mildly pleasant' and 14% as 'neutral'.
In a separate experiment, the researchers presented visitors to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery with an unlabelled historic book smell - sampled from a 1928 book they obtained from a second-hand bookshop in London - and collected the terms used to describe the smell. The word 'chocolate' - or variations such as 'cocoa' or 'chocolatey' - was used most often, followed by 'coffee', 'old', 'wood' and 'burnt'. Participants also mentioned smells including 'fish', 'body odour', 'rotten socks' and 'mothballs'.
Cecilia Bembibre, heritage scientist at UCL and corresponding author of the study said: "Our odour wheel provides an example of how scientists and historians could begin to identify, analyze and document smells that have cultural significance, such as the aroma of old books in historic libraries. The role of smells in how we perceive heritage has not been systematically explored until now."
Will our grandchildren recognize the smell of diesel, or oil?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday April 08 2017, @09:53AM (4 children)
I just opened a book published in the '50-ies - it smells of dust primarily.
I love it, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by looorg on Saturday April 08 2017, @10:51AM (1 child)
That was my first thought to - what do books smell like? Usually dust, but then that is probably the dust smelling and not the actual books.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday April 08 2017, @03:55PM
Paper actually absorbs quite a bit of oder from the surroundings in which it was stored. When I bring in a new old manual I can often smell things like smoke, machine oils, mildew, and so on.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Saturday April 08 2017, @12:10PM
And dust is supposed to be mostly skin cells, so: old books smell like someone's grandparents.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Saturday April 08 2017, @03:48PM
Not that long ago I opened a particular early 80s software package, it had been well stored and still had the "new stuff" smell inside of it. It was the sort of expensive software package that a vendor would have tried hard to make appealing to the big suites. I think these days much has been forgotten about the underlying presentation of a product. Things like the smell, the quality of the slip cover and binder, textures, and so on.
So what does a .PDF smell like? :P