An audio guide app will be trialled at the Da Nang Museum of Cham Sculpture during October and November, and it will be officially put into use next year.

The project is funded by financial donations from local individuals and organisations, and the project’s developer is Mr Ho Hai Duy, a guide at the museum.  After finishing a course about audio guides in the USA, Mr Duy was determined to promote the application of the app at the museum.  The application of this technology will be an important milestone in the improvement of guide services at the museum.

Mr Duy and a foreign volunteer who is recording his voice

Audio guide apps have been successfully applied at many museums in developed countries around the world, but one has yet to be used in Viet Nam.  Visitors to the museum will be able to use touchscreen tablets, smartphones and other personal devices, accompanied by earphones, to enjoy self-guided themed audio tours of the museum.  This will help to reduce over-reliance on the museum’s guiding staff.

Mr Duy said that the app service costs only half the price of the museum’s current admission fee, which now stands at 40,000 VND per person.  In addition, the service will help to meet the increasing demands for visiting or conducting research at the museum, especially among students from both home and abroad.  Mr Duy also noted that, during the trial period, visitors will be able to access audio recordings in English and Vietnamese, but the service will be in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish and other less popular foreign languages in the near future.

In addition to applying the audio guide app, the museum’s management board will later use software systems which facilitate the effective management of artifacts on display at the venue, as well as help visitors to more easily learn about the objects on display.