Reading Isn’t Easy: A Survey on Leveling Systems in US Libraries

Abstract

Mention the words “Easy Readers” and “Leveling” to any children’s librarian and you are sure to get a breadth of responses—from reverence to revulsion. No two librarians will feel the same way about a system. With this article, we wanted to get a birds-eye view of how children’s librarians across the country felt about leveling: if they do or don’t do it, how they feel about it, and how does it work (or not) for their library.

For this article, we created a survey on Google Forms consisting of thirteen mostly multiple-choice questions, with write-in options, that we distributed to various librarian-focused Facebook groups and through the ALSC community on ALA Connect.