My grandmother, who still runs her town’s public library at 85 (that’s not only her age but her land speed; they build ’em tough back home), was filling me in on the progress of building renovations. I saw part of the work over the holidays, but to be honest it’ll take a lot more talking to convince me I like it. It’s nice, but it just doesn’t smell right.

I mean that literally. When you go back to a place you’ve grown up in, it may look different and sound different and everything may be curiously shorter than it was when you were five, but only if the smell of the place has changed will it rock you right down to your socks that there’s no going back.

Which would make you think I’d be all atwitter about the recent announcement that Digiscents will be delivering smell technology to the desktop. Uh, no. Smell-enabled computing reared its stinky head back in ’92, when Idaho Computing announced the ScentMaster, hardware that would olfactorily enhance the silicon-wrangling experience. I knew the boys behind Idaho—Andrew and Eric, a couple of prank-happy editors from Internet World. They’ve ruined me; I can’t take Digiscents seriously. (And if only that were the extent of the ruination, I’d be a happier columnist today. But I digress.)

As I was wandering the Digiscents site looking for the “gotcha!” message, a phrase did indeed reach out and get me: “At very few points in our lives have we ever been deceived by our sense of smell.” Damn skippy, thought I. And then I realized that they were specifically marketing to Gen X and their spendier siblings Gen Y.

Do you think they’d consider marketing the scent of a library?

Do you think it would help?

The Seattle library system’s Web site is hands down my favorite public service site, particularly the section where you can look up books and CDs in the catalog and have them sent to your friendly neighborhood branch for pickup. Most convenient, but what I really like about the library is the browsing and the surprise and the serendipity of pulling a book off the shelf and discovering an entirely new vista on the world. We talk a lot about the Web putting us just a click or two away from even the most obscure information, but to be truthful we’re not using it that way; recent studies show that the Web’s most beaten paths are increasingly the only ones your average surfer ventures down.

The Web was supposed to improve on such things as libraries, which are handicapped by available shelf space (there’s never enough) and limited open hours. Instead of schlepping home stacks of books or sitting cross-legged on the floor flipping through magazines, we signed onto the Web and waited for it to find us where we live.

After almost seven years of the Web, though, I’m not sure that some of this stuff belongs where I live. I’m not talking about pornography or hate speech. I’m talking about old novels, strange photojournals, back issues of defunct magazines (RIP, LIFE), giant dusty atlases, and other items that not only don’t fit on the bookshelves of my home library but don’t fit on my screen.

Cramming the sum of all human knowledge into a browser-friendly format may convey information (the surprisingly small percentage that makes it to a Webbish format, thanks to obscurity and the increasing rapaciousness of copyright law), but it doesn’t convey the thrill of discovery. Instead of the explorer’s thrill of uncovering a dusty book and finding freshness between its covers, we have the synthetic excitement of hype driving us to go where everyone else is going until it’s time to go to the next new thing.

My grandmother’s library sees perhaps two patrons a day, most of them older folks. The kids don’t come in anymore; VCRs and PlayStations and after-school sports keep them from paying attention to the boxy building on the corner across from the fire station. Even Harry Potter sits unnoticed, checked out just once since his arrival in town six months ago. But now the building smells like new carpet and fresh paint. Is that enough, do you think, to bring back our overmarketed generation? My grandmother and I would like to know.