Why does my library … whiff? (Part Deux)

A year-and-a-half ago, I asked the perennial book-lover’s question:  Why does my library … whiff?  And I got some answers, incomprehensible as they were.  I wrote about that here.

Now PopSci is taking up the question.  Here’s what it has to say in “FYI: Why Do Libraries Smell?”

The musty smell is most likely cellulose decay. Since the mid-19th century, when papermakers began using groundwood pulp in place of cotton or linen, most paper has contained an unstable compound called lignin, which breaks down into acids and makes paper very brittle. Since 2001, the Library of Congress has treated at least 250,000 books every year with magnesium oxide. The chemical deacidifies paper and slows decay.

Read the rest here.  One reader offered his own article on the Heritage Smells Project here. Another reader complained:  “This article was so small, it neglected to mention why paper makers started using groundwood pulp. Furthermore, it neglected to mention that it also replaced hemp paper, even though it doesn’t suffer from the same problem over a comparable amount of time since it contains only a fraction of the lignin.  Can we get a further explanation on the costs of this sniffing/restoration vs simply changing the format it’s stored in?”

I’m not a chemist, and I don’t have much of an opinion.  Cellulose, shmellulose.  Still smells like cat urine to me.

Author: Cynthia Haven

Cynthia Haven has written for The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, World Literature Today, and other publications. Her work has also appeared in Le Monde, La Repubblica, The Kenyon Review, Quarterly Conversation, The Georgia Review, Civilization, and others. She has been a Milena Jesenská Journalism Fellow with the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna. Peter Dale in Conversation with Cynthia Haven was published in London, 2005. Her Czestaw Mitosz: Conversations was published in 2006; Joseph Brodsky: Conversations in 2003; An Invisible Rope: Portraits of Czestaw Mitosz was published in 2011 with Ohio University Press / Swallow Press. She is currently a visiting scholar at Stanford. Her biography René Girard, A Life will be published next year. Join me at twitter: @chaven View all posts by Cynthia Haven