1. Readability in Information Retrieval:
Designing OPAC with Readability as Search
Option
Barnali Roy Choudhury
JRF, Department of Library and Information Science
The University of Burdwan
Burdwan- 713104
E-mail:- barna.chakrabarti@gmail.com
&
Dr. ParthaSarathi Mukhopadhyay
Asst. Professor, Department of Library and Information Science
The University of Burdwan
Burdwan- 713104
psmukhopadhyay@gmail.com

2. “READING NATION IS THE
LEADING NATION”

3. What is Readability?
Edgar Dale and Jeanne Chall [1949] define readability as “the
sum total (including all the interaction) of all those elements
within a given piece of printed material that effect the
success group of readers have with it. The success is the
extent to which they understand it, read it at an optimal
speed and find it interesting.”

4. What is Readability?
Readability is a measurement of the ability/ease of
understanding of a particular text document by
reader.

5. Legibility vs Readability

Legibility
Readability
Typeface ,
Syntactic complexity
Lay out of pages,
Semantic Difficulty
Font,
Clarity of text

6. HISTORY
1880 L.A. Sherman established that shorter sentences
and concrete terms help people to make sense of
what is written.
1889 Nikolai A. Rubakin found that the main blocks
were 1. strange words and 2. the use of too many
long sentences.
1921 Harry D. Kitson found sentence length and word
length were the most comprehensive issue of being
easy to read

7. Application of Readability in LIS activities
•
Readability has been used mainly as a practical tool to
predict the difficulty of reading materials and at times to
control it.
•
suitability of materials for intended audience/reader.
•
To retrieve the right/relative documents which are more
effective and efficient for reader.

8. Application of Readability in LIS activities
•
•
To help librarians to facilitate right document (as their level
best) to users.
By
a
readability
measurement
tag
or
numerical
representation in a document may fulfill the fourth law of
LIS i.e, save the time of reader/user by retrieving documents
rapidly.
•
Readability
is
helpful
for
academic/
scholarly
communication for their research purpose or in object
oriented reading. It may helpful for nonprofit organization,
financial institution, insurance agencies and last but not the
least children with concerned parents also.

9. Popular Readability Formulae
The Flesch Grade Level Readability Formula (1948)
Major Parameters are:
ASL = Average Sentence Length & ASW = Average number of Syllable per Word
Formula: FKRA = (0.39 x ASL) + (11.8 x ASW) – 15.59
The New Dale-Chall Readability Formula (1948)
Major Parameter: Raw Score = Reading Grade of a reader who can answer one-half of the test
questions on the passage., PDW = Percentage of Difficult Words & ASL = Average Sentence
Length in words
Formula: Raw Score = 0.1579 PDW + 0.0496 ASL + 3.6365
The Gunning’s Fog Index (or FOG) Readability Formula (1952)
Major parameter: ASL = Average Sentence Length, & PHW = Percentage of Hard Words
Formula: Grade Level = 0.4 (ASL + PHW)

10. Updated readability
Formula
•
•
Lexile Measurement
ATOS (Advantage-TASA Open
Standard)

11. Lexile Measure
Lexile Measurement:
Lexile measurement is defined as “the numeric
representation of an individuals reading ability or a text's
readability (or difficulty) followed by 'L' (Lexile). ”
Facilitate suitable and efficient interaction between
readers of all ages with books, articles and other reading
materials.

12. Lexile Measure
For Your Text
For Your Test
Reading assessments
Getting
standard/certified
lexile measures for
books, articles and
other resources

13. Lexile Measure
Lexile framwork for reading
Lexile reader
measure
Lexile Text Measure
The Lexile framework measures both reader ability and
text difficulty on the same scale, called the lexile scale.
It runs from 0L (Lexile) to above 2000L. 0L is meant
for Biginning Reader.

15. Lexile measures help Readers, Teachers,
Parents and Librarians.

16. Variables of Lexile
Formula
Lexile formula is based on two axioms
1. The Semantic axioms :
The more familiar the words, the easier the passage is to
read.
The more unfamiliar the words are harder.
2. The Syntactic axioms:
The shorter the sentences, the easier the passage is
to read.
The larger the sentences the harder

17. Lexile Formula
Theoretical Logit = (9.82247*LMSL)(2.14634*MLWF)-constant where LMSL = log of
the mean sentence length and MLWF = mean of the
log word frequences. LMSL and MLWF are used
as proxies for syntactic complexity and semantic
demand. (Stenner & Burdick, 1997)
The logits anchored in the equation above translate
into Lexiles with the following formula:
Lexile calibration = (logit + 3.3)*180 + 200

18. How to get lexile
measure
1. Lexile Analyzer
2. “Find a Book”

19. Lexile Analyzer

20. Lexile Analyzer

21. “Find a Book”

22. “Find a Book”

23. “Find a Book”

24. MARC Data Entry

25. Advance Search
Option

26. ISBD View

27. MARC View on this
document

28. Findings
Readability may act as an important search option in the user
interface (here OPAC);
This option can be integrated with other search operators
(Boolean, Relational and positional operators)
It (readability as search option) may be very helpful for student
users in retrieving documents in a given range of reading
ease (e.g. Books on optics for students of class 11 and 12)
Readabilty search option has all the ability to enhance the
information retrieval efficiency of a library system of any
type or size
This search option may easily be incorporated in a library
system by using open source software (here Koha 3.6.1)
and open standard (here MARC 21 Bibliographic format)

29. THANKS FOR YOUR KIND ATTENTION