True Story

Around 35 years ago, When my sister worked at the University of Illinois as a bibliographic searcher she hunted through hundreds of huge volumes that listed cataloging information for millions of books so that recently received books could be cataloged correctly. One of these reference works was the union catalog of the British Museum Library (in the library world, it is usually referred to as the BM catalog). It runs well over 100 volumes and the paper on which it was printed had a peculiar and distinct odor. One of her co-workers was a recent hire from Great Britain who had done similar work in her home country. She was seated next to my sister when she got a whiff of the U of Illinois' copy of the British Museum catalog after which she exclaimed in her British accent, "Why your BM's smell just like our BM's!"