Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren bog Obam Here. If you're like me, you love
Speaker 1: the smell of old fashioned analog paper books, old books,
Speaker 1: new books, and researchers at University College London suggests that
Speaker 1: these scents aren't just nice, they're an important part of
Speaker 1: the human experience. In an extensive study of smells, heritage
Speaker 1: and historic paper published in the journal Heritage Science, the
Speaker 1: authors argue the importance of documenting and preserving smells, but why.
Speaker 1: The researchers realized that visitors at St. Paul's Cathedral, Dean
Speaker 1: and Chapter Library in London frequently comment on the aroma
Speaker 1: of the space, saying they feel like they can smell
Speaker 1: history thanks to our limbic system. Odors can make us
Speaker 1: pretty emotional, especially when they evoke memories. Sense affect how
Speaker 1: we experience different cultures and places and help us gain
Speaker 1: more insight into and engage more deeply with the past.
Speaker 1: The researchers posit that smells are part of our cultural
Speaker 1: heritage and have historical value and deserve to be identified, analyzed,
Speaker 1: and archived. Using chemical analysis and sensory descriptions, the study
Speaker 1: authors set about figuring out a way for scientists and
Speaker 1: historians to do so. In one experiment, the researchers asked
Speaker 1: visitors at the historic library to characterize the odors they smelled.
Speaker 1: More than seventy percent of respondents considered the library smell
Speaker 1: as pleasant. All of the visitors thought it smelled woody,
Speaker 1: while noticed a smokey aroma, reported an earthy scent, and
Speaker 1: forty one percent said they smelled vanilla. Other less frequent
Speaker 1: responses ranged from musty, too pungent, and floral to rancid.
Speaker 1: In another experiment, the study authors analyzed the responses of
Speaker 1: seventy nine visitors to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
Speaker 1: UK to the smell of a historic book from a
Speaker 1: second hand bookstore. To capture the book smell, a piece
Speaker 1: of sterile gauze was soaked in five million leaders of
Speaker 1: an extract of the book odor and placed in an
Speaker 1: unlabeled metal canister screwed shut to prevent visitors from peaking.
Speaker 1: The top three responses when the visitors were prompted to
Speaker 1: describe the smell chocolate, coffee, and old. The team then
Speaker 1: analyzed the volatile organic compounds in the book and the library.
Speaker 1: Most odors are composed of these v o c s,
Speaker 1: which are chemicals that evaporate at low temperatures. VOCs are
Speaker 1: often associated with certain smell types, for example, acetic acid
Speaker 1: smells sour, isoamal acetate smells like bananas. Using the data
Speaker 1: from the chemical analysis and visitors smell descriptions, the researchers
Speaker 1: created the Historic Book Odor Wheel to document an archive
Speaker 1: the historic library smell Main categories such as sweet or
Speaker 1: spicy fill the inner circle of the wheel. Descriptors such
Speaker 1: as caramel or biscuits fill the middle, and the chemical
Speaker 1: compounds likely to be the smelly source, like for furral,
Speaker 1: fill the outer circle. The researchers want the Book Odor
Speaker 1: Wheel to be an inter disciplinary tool that untrained noses
Speaker 1: can use to identify smells and the compounds causing them,
Speaker 1: which could address conservators concerns about material composition and degradation,
Speaker 1: inform artifact paper conservation decisions, and benefit olfactory museum experiences.
Speaker 1: Today's episode was written by Shelley Dancy and produced by Tyler.
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Speaker 1: brain stuff. For more on this and lots of other
Speaker 1: evocative topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot
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