Mechanical Sniffer Detects Old Book Smell, Could Help Preserve Library Collections
Can a device tell what's happening with these old books? Photo by Jenny Spadafora, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0A 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. 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...