Heritage Smells!

About

We are all familiar with the smell of old books, but it has only recently been shown that the compounds emitted by paper provide clues about its composition and condition.

Using appropriate portable tools it should in principle be possible to “sniff” objects in non-laboratory conditions and thus provide valuable information to the end-users.

The increased interest in volatiles emitted by heritage objects (i.e. their smell) also comes from the fact that they constitute indoor-generated pollution. This is known to affect materials and objects in close (or not so close) contact but needs to be understood better. Some objects, particularly ethnographic ones, may have been treated with pesticides and their safest identification could be by instrumental sniffing.

Aim

The Heritage Smells! project aimed to lead the way towards the introduction of small portable sniffing devices into conservation and management practice.

We were particularly involved in research on book and plastic material identification and condition assessment based on non-destructive determination of volatiles emitted by the objects. To do this, we used gas chromatography and mass spectrometry in the laboratory, and a portable mass spectrometric tool to be used in situ, in libraries, museums, archives and galleries. The data needed to be instantly available, and development of appropriate data processing tools was part of the task.

Outputs

Key features of the Heritage Intelligence system:

Simple to install and configure with a highly accessible user interface and tools for management of the system
Self powered wireless nodes with a long operational life (including power scavenging technology)
Ability of the network to reconfigure itself and adapt as objects are relocated (or moved in transit) or sensors redeployed
Ability to support multiple sensors and sensor types in a single sensor node (e.g. temperature, relative humidity, light, pollutants and mechanical monitoring such as shock and tilt)
Built-in intelligence, so that the network can adapt measurement regimes, identify events and generate alerts.

The Heritage Intelligence System works on the basis of numerous wireless nodes communicating with each other and each carrying several sensors, as required. The number of possible configurations is unlimited.