SOURCE
Primary study — Reports its own measurements or observations.
Matija Strlič et al. · Analytical Chemistry
Title, journal, date and first author checked against the publisher’s Crossref record on 2026-10-02 by an automated check. Publication date confirmed to the day. The publisher reported no open licence for the work. SmellBook publishes only the citation and its own claim, never the work’s text.
Reviewed 2026-10-02 · corrections 0
Old-book aroma and paper degradation volatiles ↗
Research on historic paper has measured volatile organic compounds released during material degradation and linked those emissions to the characteristic smell of old books.
Scope: Supports the role of paper degradation volatiles; individual books and libraries can differ by materials, storage and environment.CLM-OLDBOOK-001Known volatile degradation products of paper ↗
Headspace analysis of degrading historic paper found acetic acid and furfural, known volatile paper degradation products, and put forward lipid peroxidation products among other compounds of potential interest.
Scope: Paper samples after a 24-hour pre-degradation in the laboratory; the study does not attribute the smell of old books to any single compound.CLM-OLDBOOK-002SmellBook records only the molecules its own claims name from this source, in the role each claim states; a name with no molecule record is listed with the reason. The source may report others.
Source record SRC-OLDBOOK-2009
Permanent identifier smellbook:source:old-book-2009 · This record and its links as data (JSON)
Dataset history In the SmellBook dataset since the first of three dataset releases of 2026-09-30.