The reading rooms of the public research libraries here have their peculiar challenges. (Beyond the occasional lounge singer belting out pop tunes.)
The vast majority of folks there are invariably there just to cadge the free internet and table space, which creates a distinctly different vibe than if the room had been filled with people reading books. Attention is looser, unconscious interactions towards the others increase.
The ideal, I suppose, would be separate desks (it's unnerving that any given person is the city is free to show up and sit down facing you, a few feet away, while you're trying to read), like in the old British Museum reading room (perhaps at the LOC reading room as well -- I've never been there, only seen photos). Given the character of the city, it's no exaggeration, and I think an uncontroversial statement, that an objective person, or even one grounded in the national culture generally, feels him or herself constantly surrounded by both genuine evil, and the indolent comfortable folks who are always open to the thought of it.
It's revealing, though -- the assumption that, so long as everyone is empirically doing much the same thing (encountering text, not talking) that the character of the room is sufficiently preserved. The difficulty is in the obstacles to concentration -- when a society actively creates a space for this use, it should be trying to move towards a more congenial environment for that sort of thing, rather than simply re-create the empirics of past tokens of the type.