It seems that nowadays, we document everything. We can archive our sense of sight in photographs, the things we hear in audio or video recordings, the things we touch in our collection of significant textiles; we even document our sense of taste in the recipes we pass from generation to generation.
What we don’t seem to document is smell, despite the fact that it is strongly connected to our memories and emotions. But now, that’s all going to change if two researchers from the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage have their way.
Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič recently conducted a two-part investigation into the viability of preserving culturally significant smells, and how they could be used as part of the museum experience to capture the emotions of the visitors.
The case study used in the research was the smell of old books—and yes, as a bookworm that was what caught my eye. According to the researchers, they chose the smell of paper because of “its well-recognized cultural significance and available research.”
In the first part of the study, the researchers conducted a survey of visitors to the Dean and Chapter Library at the St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. All of the visitors described the smell as ‘woody,’ but other descriptions varied. 86% of those surveyed decided on a partially smoky smell, 71% considered it earthy, and 41% caught a hint of vanilla hiding in the library. These results can be seen in the figure to the left that tracks the respondents’ characterization of the smells.
In a different experiment, the researchers brought an unlabeled smell with them to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. In this case, respondents most frequently cited ‘chocolate’ as the smell. Other answers ranged from ‘coffee,’ ‘old,’ ‘wood,’ and ‘burnt,’ to ‘fish,’ ‘body odor,’ ‘rotten socks,’ and ‘mothballs.’
Personally, I find it interesting how the less appealing odors were identified once the smell, which was sampled from a book from 1928, was no longer associated with the space. There must be something about a library that can make mothballs and dust feel warm and cozy.
The second analysis was a chemical one. The researchers sampled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in order to determine the source of the olfactory sensations. VOCs are “chemicals that evaporate at low temperatures, many of which can be perceived as scents or odors.”
After the chemical analysis, Bembibre and Strlič combined their findings into a “historic book odor wheel.” The wheel contains “general aroma categories, sensory descriptors, and chemical information on the smells sampled.” The likely chemical compound producing the smell was matched using established odor description databases, something I hadn’t even known existed.

Bembibre, the corresponding author of the study, adds that the historic book odor wheel has “the potential to be used as a diagnostic tool by conservators, informing on the condition of an object, for example, its state of decay, through its olfactory profile.”
So, the next time you catch a scent that sends you into the depths of your memory, remember it, because it may be the next new way to document your personal history.
Image credits: Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič via Heritage Science
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