Decoding the Smell of Old Books, We finally have a tool

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It’s official. Science has decided that old books smell “smoky,” “earthy,” and more than anything, “woody.”

That’s based on findings released today by Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič, researchers at the UCL Institute for Sustainable Heritage, who have been working to capture, analyze, and catalog historic and culturally important scents. The scientists collected the responses of visitors to St Paul’s Cathedral’s Dean and Chapter library in London, asking them to describe the smell and later compiling the results in a document they’re calling the Historic Book Odour Wheel.

Part of the challenge, they said, was that everyone’s smell vocabulary is a bit different.