Patna Museum. Picture by Deepak Kumar

Patna, Feb. 6: Visitors to Patna Museum have reasons to rejoice as the authorities are in talks with an Australia-based company — Narrowcasters — to introduce an audio tour facility at the centre.

Once operational, the audio system would narrate the history of the various artefacts kept at the museum to the visitors, including domestic and foreign tourists, in their preferred language.

The audio system would include earphones and a hand-held device that will be provided to the visitors at the entrance of the museum. The device will have buttons with numerals inscribed on them and similar numerals with sensors will be placed near the artefacts. The visitors would get audio feed in their preferred language as soon as they would press the number (displayed near the artefact) on the hand-held sensory device.

The audio tour guide may also include an artificial intelligence system, which will sense the location of the visitor and narrate the content. Such an arrangement is being contemplated for differently abled persons.

According to senior officials of the Patna Museum, talks with the Narrowcasters are in the final stages and the agreement is likely to be signed as soon as the financial terms and conditions are fixed between the two parties.

“Many visitors to the museum, especially the foreign tourists from non-English speaking countries, face difficulties in comprehending the information given on the display tags of the artefacts. Subsequently, Patna Museum, under the aegis of state youth art, culture and youth affairs department, decided to engage a firm for running an audio guide service inside the museum centre on build, operate and transfer basis. Such a system would enable the visitors to listen to information about the artefacts on display in the languages of their choice,” said JPN Singh, additional director, Patna Museum.

Singh added: “After observing the audio guide service being provided by Narrowcasters at National Museum, New Delhi and Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai, we decided to approach the company for installation of a similar system at Patna Museum. The company has agreed to most terms and conditions for the installation of the proposed audio guide system and only negotiations on the financial terms are left before both the parties would enter an agreement. We intend to get 100 per cent investment for the audio system from the company and share revenue (generated from the facility) in the operational stages. In fact, we recently sent the final proposal to them and are waiting for their reply.”

Narrowcasters has also set up similar audio system at City Palace, Udaipur, Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer Fort Palace in Rajasthan. According to sources, the proposed audio guide system would be installed at an estimated outlay of Rs 8 lakh.

Sources said minimum 25 audio devices would be available at the counter of the museum, which would be available to the visitors at a pre-determined rate. The audio feed will include sound effects, music and commentary in MP3 format.