The Girls' Books in Series collection at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's Jackson Library contains over 1850 volumes, with publication dates ranging from the mid-1800s to the 1980s. The library's list currently contains approximately 511 different series. The library owns all the titles for 85 of the series. For 167 of the series, the library does not have any titles, and for the remaining 259, the library owns at least one (and sometimes most) of the titles. The volumes in these series depict a wide range of settings, environments, and situations in which the young heroines act. These books, aimed at a pre-teen and teen audience, both reflected and perhaps molded the lives of girls over the course of a century. They serve as either descriptive or prescriptive views of behaviors deemed normal, exceptional, or acceptable. An area of possible interest concerns images of college life, particularly the freshman year experience. By linking fictional accounts of what it meant to be a female freshman to the actual and evolving status of young women in higher education, it might be possible to ascertain a relationship between teenagers' reading materials and their aspirations to higher education. Another question concerns the quality of children's book series and their role in, and effect on, children's reading behavior
