There should be a button you can press to make a librarian (or a recording of a librarian) say, "Shhhh!", and/or tut disapprovingly.

My librarian wife absolutely hates this trope.

Well, it seems that they're playing a pre-recorded 26 minutes sound file [0]. I was really hoping it'd be live, too bad!

[0] : https://cf-media.sndcdn.com/xSJhDFub1Th1.128.mp3?Policy=eyJT...

Awh, that's a shame, I thought it was live

Does anyone know if this is live?

While this is admittedly strange, there's actually a pretty big market for noise generators, and the thought that you are telematically sitting in the Bodleian is very cool indeed.

The answer is here, it's basically a psychology experiment: https://medium.com/@Oxford_University/how-do-you-design-the-...