A project at the British Library seeks to chemically analyze that old-book smell to help librarians determine what they need to do to preserve aging collections.

Can a device tell what's happening with these old books?
Can a device tell what's happening with these old books? Photo by Jenny Spadafora, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

That old book smell may be loveable, but it's also a sign of books' decay. Now the British Library is working with a chemical detection company to quantify that smell for book preservation.

Ultimately, the library and company, Owlstone Nanotech, want to see if a mechanical sniffer is able to identify the types of fibers in a book's pages, as well as the "mode and degree of degradation" of a book. Could a device detect, for example, whether a book is undergoing acid hydrolysis or oxidation? The library is also interested in whether books made with acidic paper release acids that affect nearby books printed on non-acidic paper.

The British Library is testing Owlstone Nanotech's Lonestar Portable Analyzer, which Owlstone--a company known for its bomb-detecting technology--advertises as portable, easy for non-specialists to use and faster than other chemical techniques such as gas chromatography.

Much of the chemistry of the old book smell is already well known. A 2009 study characterized the scent as "a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness." (Sexy.) One company has distilled it into a perfume. According to the British Library, "more than 100 different compounds, including acids, aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, alkanes and terpenes, have been identified in books and paper, so the challenge is to identify those which are most significant."

[Library Journal]

4 Comments

This is great sense, pun intended. Throw in parasite infestation detection.

"That old book smell may be loveable,...."

If the book is moldy, the smell might be dangerous.

If you think Jeff`s story is terrific..., in the last month my sisters girlfriend basically brought home $9030 grafting a 10 hour week from their apartment and the're buddy's mother-in-law`s neighbour done this for six months and got a cheque for more than $9030 parttime on there pc. follow the tips on this page...... BIT40.ℂOℳ

Why waste money and resources trying to build a crappy device to smell books when we got a perfectly good working one on our face for free. Don't fix something that isn't broken.



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