Head Tale

AskMetafilter recently had the following question posed which led to some great discussion.

Did libraries (public and university) stop requiring people to be quiet in the last few years, or is it just me?

At home on a recent break, I tried studying in a number of public
libraries and found that most were noisier than the local Starbucks. It
wasn't just the young people and cellphone talkers you might expect;
the worst offenders were senior citizens and a few librarians
themselves (one of whom read off the names of all the presidents over
the phone in a normal-to-loud voice.) Whispering seemed completely out
of place, the relic of a bygone era. The same is true of my university
library. I know there are a lot of librarians here; has there been a
major policy shift in libraries over the last few years, or have they
just given up? (Or am I imagining it?)