Running two sessions on one library floor

Libraries have the same problem everywhere, and it is not money. It is noise.

You have one open floor, several things you would like to run on it, and an unwritten rule that nobody raises their voice. So you run one activity at a time, or you book the meeting room that is too small and already taken, or you do not run it at all.

Headphones take noise out of the equation. Two channels means two sessions in the same space, at the same hour, with neither group hearing the other — and the people who came in to read hearing neither.

What you need

• One headset per participant, plus around 10% spares
• Two transmitters if you want both channels running at once
• A headset microphone if a presenter is speaking live
• Somewhere to charge them overnight

Range is up to thirty metres. That covers most open floors, and it means the presenter can move around rather than standing at a fixed point.

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1. Story time and an adult session, same floor, same hour

The one that solves the most obvious problem.

Channel one: story time. Twenty children on the mat, a staff member reading live through a headset microphone, sound effects or music mixed underneath.

Channel two: the adult session — a book group, a digital skills class, a local history talk.

They sit thirty feet apart on the same floor and neither hears the other. No room booking, no shushing, and no scheduling one around the other.

The part staff notice first is that story time gets calmer, not louder. Children who normally drift stay with it, because your voice is closer than the room is.

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2. Silent reading and audiobook groups

For reluctant readers, run the audiobook on channel one and the same text on channel two at a slower pace, or with a staff member reading live. Participants choose their channel and nobody can see which they picked.

For a reading group, everyone listens to the same chapter together, then takes the headphones off and talks about it. That sounds trivial until you have tried to run a listening session on a speaker in an open library.

For study spaces, a class set means students can share an audio resource without a computer lab and without headphones tangled in a drawer.

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3. Author talks and presentations in an open space

An author talk in an open library is usually a compromise. Either you amplify and annoy everybody, or you do not amplify and the back row misses half of it.

With headsets, the back row hears exactly what the front row hears, and the rest of the building hears nothing at all.

Two practical notes:

• Let people set their own volume. Older attendees in particular will thank you, and it removes the “can you speak up” interruption entirely.
• A second channel is useful even here — put a live description or a translation on channel two for anyone who needs it.

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Accessibility, which is the quiet argument

A class set of headphones is an assisted listening system that happens to also run story time.

For anyone hard of hearing, the audio arrives directly rather than across a room with hard floors and high ceilings. For anyone who finds a busy room overwhelming, the headphones cut the ambient noise down and give them one thing to attend to.

Neither of those needs a separate purchase or a separate booking. It is the same kit doing a second job.

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What it costs

A Group Trainer 10 kit — ten Pro-Gen Gold headsets, four transmitters, a headset microphone, a charger that does the whole set overnight, and a case — is $1,400, shipped free, with a twelve month replacement warranty. Without the microphone transmitters it is $967.

For story time and most reading groups, ten is enough. For a whole-class visit or a larger talk, thirty is the number.

The headsets are RCM marked and meet ACMA standards, which is the line council procurement will ask for.

Borrow before you buy

Libraries lend things for a living, so this will not be a foreign idea: hire a kit for a week and run a real session with real patrons. It tells you more than any demonstration.

Send us a message and one of us will answer.