This special research topic

• Sets daylight as a priority analyzing what makes its presence indoors important, focusing on library buildings.
• Explores daylight, although intangible, as an architectural material, which helps saving energy and creating a well-balanced indoor reading environment.
• Explains the reason why daylight (as a source of light) should not be excluded from libraries but be used as a primary source of light instead, emphasizing on readers’ psychology and health.
• Includes recommended levels of illumination and luminance for library buildings.
• Analyzes discomfort glare.
• Explores the importance of view for readers’ satisfaction and visual comfort.
• Explains why daylight requires careful control and how systems can be integrated to the general concept in order to avoid problems that uncontrolled daylight provokes.
• Examines how architects can manipulate daylight in order to influence the brightness that a reader finally perceives, concerning openings (location and size), interior materials, even the installation of the work station, as important features of the design.
• Presents daylighting systems through the description of several library buildings emphasizing on their ingenious manipulation of light and the strategies that have been used.
• Suggests evaluation methods for illumination and luminance levels and in site measurements (using High Dynamic Range Imaging technique as a luminance mapping tool) containing a descriptive documentation on the observation and record of light conditions prevailed in selected rooms of University of Thessaly Central Library.