Lexile

The rules on this page have been approved in concept by the SCRAP committee, but the exact wording is still being adjusted. Please use these rules. Please send any feedback to SCRAP.

For books, a Lexile text measure (also called Lexile measure or just Lexile) is a numeric or alphanumeric code that indicates the reading difficulty of a particular text. The scale ranges 5 to 2000; lower numbers indicate a lower difficulty and higher numbers indicate a higher difficulty. (A first chapter book might get a Lexile measure of "5"; a graduate-level text might get a Lexile measure of "2000".) A Lexile measure is typically found on book vendor websites or in a book as a number followed by an L—such as "880L", which means "880 Lexile". (The number followed by the spelled-out word is the format used in MARC records.) Lexile text measures are only assigned by the MetaMetrics company and are only applied to books, e-books, magazine articles, and other print material.

For people, the same scale is used but is called the Lexile reader measure (also called "Lexile measure" or just "Lexile"), and indicates an individual's approximate reading ability. Any book between 100 less than and 50 more than the person's indicated Lexile measure is considered to be within that person's reading comprehension range; books with lower Lexiles will be simple, and books with higher Lexiles will be challenging. Therefore, it is important to enable catalog users to search for everything within a given range of Lexile measures.

Marcive sends us the Lexile data for our newly cataloged records, so catalogers do not need to add Lexile data to catalog records. However, since Lexiles may also be found in some WorldCat records, catalogers need to be aware of how Lexile data must be formatted in order to for local catalog searches to work.

Format

Most Lexile text measures consist only of a number. Sometimes, the number itself is insufficient to determine whether a book is appropriate for a given person. Therefore, some Lexile text measures are prefixed by or consist only of a two letter Lexile code. The Lexile codes are:

Code	Meaning (Explanation)
AD	Adult Directed (the book is designed to be read to a child rather than by a child)
NC	Non-Conforming (the book's Lexile measure is significantly higher than typical for the intended audience)
HL	High-Low (the book's Lexile measure is significantly lower than typical for the intended audience)
IG	Illustrated Guide (the book consists of lots of independent pieces of text, such as an illustrated encyclopedia; a book with lots of pronunciations or definitions in parentheses or contrasting time; a book with lots of pull-quotes, factoids, and other marginalia; or a book with discrete topics on each one or two pages)
GN	Graphic Novel (the book is a graphic novel or a comic book)
BR	Beginning Reading (the book has a Lexile of 0 or a negative number and are appropriate for beginning readers; only the code appears, not the number)
NP	Non-Prose (more than 50% of the book is not prose, but rather poems, plays, songs, recipes, text that consists of incomplete sentences or lacks punctuation, etc.; only the code appears, not a number)

These codes are very important to patrons and staff searching for material that is appropriate for a particular reader. If you omit them, the resulting data can be extremely misleading.

In order to index the Lexile measures in the CCS database in such a way as to allow patrons and staff to search for all books with a range of Lexile numbers, the data must be formatted as follows.

What appears in the Lexile database:	What appears in our database:
880L	521 _8 880‡bLexile.
AD880L	521 _8 AD 880‡bLexile.
NC880L	521 _8 NC 880‡bLexile.
HL880L	521 _8 HL 880‡bLexile.
IG880L	521 _8 IG 880‡bLexile.
GN880L	521 _8 GN 880‡bLexile.
BR	521 _8 BR‡bLexile.
NP	521 _8 NPLexile.

Correcting OCLC Copy

While almost all of the Lexile data in our catalog is supplied by Marcive, you may find Lexile data in WorldCat records. Please make sure this data is correctly formatted when cataloging these records, so that the records are indexed correctly for Lexile searching.

In order for the Lexile search to work, there must be a space between the prefix and the number and "Lexile" must appear instead of the "L" suffix. If the L is entered after the number or there is no space between a prefix code and a number, then the data will not be indexed properly and the record will not be retrieved when a patron or staff member performs a Lexile search. If the word "Lexile" is left out, Symphony's search engine will not be able to adequately differentiate that data from other data that is normally coded in 521 _8 (such as Guided Reading Levels).

What's in WorldCat	Locally change it to this (Connexion)	Locally change it to this (WorkFlows)
521 _8 880L ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 880 ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 880‡bLexile.
521 _8 AD880 ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 AD 880 ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 AD 880‡bLexile.
521 _8 Lexile: 880.	521 _8 880 ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 880‡bLexile.
521 _8 Lexile: AD880L.	521 _8 AD 880 ‡b Lexile.	521 _8 AD 880‡bLexile.
521 _8 Reading level: 5; Guided Reading Level: V; Lexile: 830L.	521 _0 5. 521 _8 Guided Reading Level: V. 521 _8 830 ‡b Lexile.	521 _0 5. 521 _8 Guided Reading Level: V. 521 _8 830‡bLexile.

Searching

Lexile searches are a bit trickier to perform than typical word or phrase searches.

If you want to search for all items with a particular Lexile measure, do a General/Words or Phrase search for the number and the word "Lexile", qualified by the index "lexile". For example:

880 Lexile {lexile}.

If you want to search for all items within a range of Lexiles--which is what the Lexile company recommends--that is a bit more complicated. Do a General/Words or Phrase search, but put the index qualifier first, followed by the range, using less than (<), greater than (>) and equal to (=), followed by the word "Lexile". For example:

{lexile} <300 Lexile

{lexile} >=800<=900 Lexile

{lexile} >1300 Lexile

External Links

• Lexile.com
• Lexile.com's "find a book" search tool