Library adds privacy booth for quiet conversations

Quiet has always been expected in libraries. But inside the Wilmington Public Library, silence has never been easy to achieve.
Housed inside a former church with a high ceiling and open floor plan, the building tends to carry sound throughout the space.
“This building, you can hear everything,” said library director Maria Meachum. “When people say ‘use indoor voices,’ you might as well not bother, because they can hear you whisper too.”
Because of that design, the library has long felt more like a community gathering space than a traditional silent reading room.
“This building carries a lot of noise, and so we’re more of a rowdy community center-type library,” Meachum admitted. “The people, for the most part, love it. But there are people who don’t. They want quiet.”
To help meet that need, the Wilmington Public Library District recently installed a Pillar privacy booth inside the library — a sound-insulated space designed for two people.
The booth was installed less than three weeks ago and has already generated interest among patrons.
“It is a great thing to bring privacy to our library,” Meachum said.
The $15,000 booth provides a private place for small meetings, tutoring sessions, phone calls, telehealth appointments or other conversations that shouldn’t be overheard. The unit measures about seven feet wide, four feet deep and seven feet tall, with a glass wall that allows natural light to flow inside.
Inside the booth are motion-activated LED lights, USB charging ports, electrical outlets and an ethernet connection for devices. Four built-in fans refresh the air more than once per minute, while thick acoustic panels help keep conversations private and block out outside noise.
Meachum said the idea for the booth came after years of patrons asking for a private place to meet — something the Wilmington library never had.
“We get at least a call a month from some out-of-town lawyer needing to take a deposition from somebody here in Wilmington,” Meachum said. “They ask if they can reserve a study room, and we don’t have study rooms.”

Often, staff had to refer those requests to larger libraries in nearby communities.
“Most often we’d send them to Fossil Ridge Library because they have a lot of study rooms,” she said.
The lack of private space also made tutoring difficult for some young patrons.
“We’ve had tutors over the years, and the only places we had for them were tables out in the open,” Meachum said. “Kids would be sounding out words and their classmates might walk by and realize they were struggling. That was really heartbreaking because you don’t want someone to quit getting help.”
Now, the new booth offers a quiet alternative.
“This is our new quiet,” Meachum said.

The booth is available for public use and can be reserved in hourly blocks. If no one else has booked the space, users may extend their time.
The idea for the privacy booth first caught Meachum’s attention at an Illinois Library Association convention, where she saw a smaller one-person version. But she ultimately chose a larger model after staff members encouraged the purchase.
“They had the brochure with the bigger pod and were like, ‘Can we get this?’” Meachum said. “It was an investment for us, but I wanted to see it before I bought it.”
She later visited the company’s showroom in Chicago to test the booth herself.
“I sat in it and I loved it,” she said. “Whenever I have to spend money, I want to touch it and test it first.”
The booth has already been used for private online meetings, including employee onboarding sessions conducted through video conferencing.
“People have to share things like their checking account numbers or routing numbers,” Meachum said. “In the old days we might have been saying that out loud where everyone could hear. Now they can do that in complete privacy.”
The private space could also support future services at the library, such as tax preparation assistance, counseling sessions or virtual appointments.
“I had somebody doing their psychotherapy online visit in here the other day,” Meachum said. “These are things where you don’t want somebody to overhear you — and maybe you don’t want to do it at home either.”
The booth also fits in well with other recent updates at the library, including new shelving and carpeting.
“It looks like it belongs here,” Meachum said. “It really ties in nicely with the improvements we’ve made.”
For Meachum, the privacy booth is another step in her effort to expand services for library patrons.
“My goal every year I’ve been here has been to offer one new service — something you didn’t have before,” she said. “As long as we didn’t have it, I want to get it.”
With the new privacy booth now open to the public, Wilmington library patrons have a new option when they need something that has always been hard to find in the building: quiet.