Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours

Abstract

We don't know much about the smells of the past. Yet, odours play an important role in our daily lives: they affect us emotionally, psychologically and physically, and influence the way we engage with history. Can this lead us to consider certain smells as cultural heritage? And if so, what would be the processes for the identification, protection and conservation of those heritage smells? In order to answer these questions, the connection between olfaction and heritage was approached in three ways: (1) through theoretical analysis of the concept and role of olfaction in heritage guidelines, leading to identification of places and practices where smell is fundamental to their identity, (2) through exploration of the evidence for use of smells in heritage as a tool to communicate with audiences; and (3) through experimental evaluation of the techniques and methods for analysing and archiving the smells, therefore enabling their documentation and preservation. We present this through the framework of Significance Assessment-Chemical Analysis-Sensory Analysis-Archiving. The smell of historic paper was chosen as the case study, based on its well-recognized cultural significance and available research. Odour characterization was achieved by collecting visitor descriptions of a historic book extract through a survey, and by conducting a sensory evaluation at a historic library. These were combined with the chemical information on the VOCs sampled from both a historic book and a historic library, to create the Historic Book Odour Wheel, a novel documentation tool representing the first step towards documenting and archiving historic smells.

The Multisensory Experience of Handling and Reading Books

“…However, while the content of these volumes is undoubtedly key to their enduring value, it is important to note that books are fundamentally multisensory objects, and that the multisensory characteristics often tend to be more pronounced than for the case of contemporary volumes. For instance, many old and historic books, in particular, have a distinctive smell (Bembibre and Strlič, 2017), be it from the binding (or glue), the paper (Hunter, 1987), or perhaps even from the ink itself.…”

“…The VOCs that are often detected, especially from older volumes, include organic acids such as acetic and formic acid, as well as aldehydes, including acetaldehyde and formaldehyde (Strlič et al, 2009). Furfural has been linked to the degradation of cellulose, and benzaldehyde and vanillin to the degradation of lignin (Bembibre and Strlič, 2017).…”

The Art of Digital Scent - People, Space and Time

“…He pointed out the important value of smell in the historical and cultural preservation (Kennedy, 2017). Bembibre and Strlič (2017) also proposed to consider smell as intangible heritage with its historic value. They made an odour wheel of historic books as the documentation tool about the historic smells.…”

Smartphone citizen science: can a conservation hypothesis be tested using non specialist technology?

“…Paper yellowing is a major identifier of ageing in archive collections [30,31]. In part it provides character to collections and is an important factor of the public perception of historical storage such as is the smell of libraries and archives [32,33]. The yellowing can become problematic especially in fine art drawing rather than newsprint where text can often still be read.…”