How to describe how old library books smell?

I need help for a project about the Library. How could you describe the old library book smell? (Using adjectives)How to describe how old library books smell?
Everyone is describing unused books. Working in a public library, old westerns often smell like ashtrays, and romances smell like Miss Havisham or musty and old with a mild urinal cake smell. Children's picture books can smell pretty ripe, a little like rotting grass clippings. New books smell a little sour depending on the glue used. It's a shame books are no longer bound in leather. They actually smelled really nice and could keep a bit of their smell for 20 years. The overall smell of the library isn't the books but the carpeting, however, and without carpeting, it's the smell of recirculated air through dusty old filters and the burning smell of hot transformers from hundreds of florescent light fixtures.



My books, boxed at home, smell a bit like the tea I pack them in to try to keep out the bookworms, which it seems to accomplish, but I still need to find something that works on silverfish. Perhaps tea attracts them?
The crinkly yellow pages smelled like rotten broccoli and asparagus mixed together?



Help me? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;鈥?/a>How to describe how old library books smell?
Archival aroma.
Warm and humid, earthy, dense and thick, musty. I don't know what else, this is kind of hard.How to describe how old library books smell?
musty