A Scent Called
Library
by Roz Warren
Photo
by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash
A company
called Solstice Scents is marketing a scent
called Library, which it describes as
smelling like “leather bound books, a carved
rosewood mantle, dying fireplace embers, wood
wainscoting, cedar shelving and aged paper.”
I worked in an
actual library for 21 years, and my workplace
didn’t smell like any of these things. So
what should a scent called Library
smell like? To find out, I asked a group of
librarians, “if a fragrance were to smell
like your workplace, what would it
smell like?”
Here’s a
sampling of their responses:
Books
and popcorn
Mold
and dust
Cold tea
and inventory anxiety
Sanitizing
wipes
Pollen
and book mold and the smell of cut grass
Marijuana,
hand sanitizer and service animals
Underfunding
and despair
Body
odor and tequila-scented sanitizer
Fish
from that rat bastard microwaving his lunch in
the breakroom
Farts
Lysol
Aging
carpet
Eau de
livre
Body
odor from certain “regulars” and magic
markers
Pee,
cigarettes and a touch of mold
Toasted
bagels, wood polish and plants
Bourbon,
bureaucracy and chamomile
Musty
paper, homeless people and microwaved popcorn
Politics
and glue
Dead
mice
My favorite
comment?
The
scent ‘middle school library’ is best
enjoyed in a ventilated area
Maybe we can
interest Solstice Scents in putting together a
perfume that reflects what libraries really smell
like, based on these suggestions.
Or not.
All I know for
sure is that after working in an actual library
for 21 years, I wouldn’t buy somebody a
perfume that would leave them smelling like one.
Although
buying a bottle of “Library” for our
library director would have been a funny joke.
Thanks
to Don Be, whose post inspired
this piece. Any money Roz makes from publishing
it will be donated to Everylibrary
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