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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam Here. If you're like me, you love

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Speaker 1: the smell of old fashioned analog paper books, old books,

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Speaker 1: new books, and researchers at University College London suggests that

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Speaker 1: these scents aren't just nice, they're an important part of

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Speaker 1: the human experience. In an extensive study of smells, heritage

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Speaker 1: and historic paper published in the journal Heritage Science, the

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Speaker 1: authors argue the importance of documenting and preserving smells, but why.

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Speaker 1: The researchers realized that visitors at St. Paul's Cathedral, Dean

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Speaker 1: and Chapter Library in London frequently comment on the aroma

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Speaker 1: of the space, saying they feel like they can smell

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Speaker 1: history thanks to our limbic system. Odors can make us

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Speaker 1: pretty emotional, especially when they evoke memories. Sense affect how

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Speaker 1: we experience different cultures and places and help us gain

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Speaker 1: more insight into and engage more deeply with the past.

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Speaker 1: The researchers posit that smells are part of our cultural

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Speaker 1: heritage and have historical value and deserve to be identified, analyzed,

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Speaker 1: and archived. Using chemical analysis and sensory descriptions, the study

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Speaker 1: authors set about figuring out a way for scientists and

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Speaker 1: historians to do so. In one experiment, the researchers asked

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Speaker 1: visitors at the historic library to characterize the odors they smelled.

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Speaker 1: More than seventy percent of respondents considered the library smell

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Speaker 1: as pleasant. All of the visitors thought it smelled woody,

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Speaker 1: while noticed a smokey aroma, reported an earthy scent, and

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Speaker 1: forty one percent said they smelled vanilla. Other less frequent

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Speaker 1: responses ranged from musty, too pungent, and floral to rancid.

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Speaker 1: In another experiment, the study authors analyzed the responses of

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Speaker 1: seventy nine visitors to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery

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Speaker 1: UK to the smell of a historic book from a

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Speaker 1: second hand bookstore. To capture the book smell, a piece

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Speaker 1: of sterile gauze was soaked in five million leaders of

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Speaker 1: an extract of the book odor and placed in an

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Speaker 1: unlabeled metal canister screwed shut to prevent visitors from peaking.

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Speaker 1: The top three responses when the visitors were prompted to

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Speaker 1: describe the smell chocolate, coffee, and old. The team then

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Speaker 1: analyzed the volatile organic compounds in the book and the library.

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Speaker 1: Most odors are composed of these v o c s,

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Speaker 1: which are chemicals that evaporate at low temperatures. VOCs are

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Speaker 1: often associated with certain smell types, for example, acetic acid

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Speaker 1: smells sour, isoamal acetate smells like bananas. Using the data

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Speaker 1: from the chemical analysis and visitors smell descriptions, the researchers

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Speaker 1: created the Historic Book Odor Wheel to document an archive

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Speaker 1: the historic library smell Main categories such as sweet or

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Speaker 1: spicy fill the inner circle of the wheel. Descriptors such

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Speaker 1: as caramel or biscuits fill the middle, and the chemical

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Speaker 1: compounds likely to be the smelly source, like for furral,

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Speaker 1: fill the outer circle. The researchers want the Book Odor

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Speaker 1: Wheel to be an inter disciplinary tool that untrained noses

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Speaker 1: can use to identify smells and the compounds causing them,

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Speaker 1: which could address conservators concerns about material composition and degradation,

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Speaker 1: inform artifact paper conservation decisions, and benefit olfactory museum experiences.

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Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Shelley Dancy and produced by Tyler.

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Speaker 1: find all that stuff at t public dot com slash

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Speaker 1: brain stuff. For more on this and lots of other

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Speaker 1: evocative topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot

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Speaker 1: com