I spend most of my day in the library at my school (it's the only place I can study between classes.) Even though it's a "library," the administrators don't enforce any of the noise rules, and it's (ironically) one of the noisiest places on the campus.

There's one group who comes in every single morning and literally shout to communicate with each other. I've complained about them multiple times but nothing has been done. So what I've started doing is bringing two pairs of headphones: My Sennheiser in-ear buds and my Sony over-ear noise cancelling headphones. With both of them on and some Miles Davis playing softly in the background I can effectively block out all other noise.

I'd follow this one up in a more formal way with the Librarians. There should be a range of environments to support different learning modes.

In the city I live in, we have three Universities, and all of them have a 'zoned' approach. An outer work area where anything goes, some rooms where talking is allowed, and an inner quiet zone that is strictly enforced. People seem to find their equilibrium points.

The three institutions vary in standing and clientèle. The Russell Group University has the largest silent zone and small peripheral anything goes zones. The situation is reserved for the 'community' University, with a small silent zone. The technical university has about equal quiet and noisy anything goes zones with a sort of 'sensible talking' buffer zone in the middle.

My university library also has different "zones", with plenty of posters to remind you what zone you're in and what communication methods are appropriate.

But no enforcement in the quiet zones? Then that is a simple failure of service level agreement and should be pursued through the normal complaint procedures. If an organisation says they do something, then they should do it!

And yet, with clear indication that certain areas are quiet zones, people and organizations should be able to rely on the common decency of people. People will in 99% of cases respect any 'no smoking' signs without enforcement from a 'shusher', so why not the 'be quiet' signs?

I'm legitimately confused what you even mean by this comment. When did I say it wasn't enforced? Did you reply to the wrong comment?

The confusion is mine, I assumed that your comment was a second reply by Puer.

I've tried doing that but somehow cancelling all noise around me really bothers me. I'm used to hearing normal background noise and removing it weirds me out.

did you tell him that his voice is distracting? I didn't find out that my conference calls annoyed my coworkers until our annual anonymous survey. Wish I'd known sooner so I could have adjusted by behavior.

I think it seems like a rude question? I have coworkers that keep asking me trivial development questions and I don't really know how to say, "I'm going to need your first reaction to a problem to be Googling it".

No. He is tech support and must talk. He literally doesn't have an "indoor voice", so there is nothing he can do about it.