The fourth-floor of Founders Memorial Library houses the Rare Books and Special Collections department. Except for a couple of students each year, its treasure remains hidden.

The cluttered room is home to about 10,000 single-issue comic books and graphic novels that are owned by the library.

Though it began after a donation in the late 1970s, the library’s collection has only been actively built for the past three years, said curator Lynne Thomas.

“I believe it is very important to document our popular culture in addition to our ‘high culture,'” she said.

Head of the department since 2004, Thomas said comic books are a unique American art form that need to be preserved.

“When we decide to save something for posterity, we are creating a canon because we’re deciding what gets saved,” Thomas said. “If it doesn’t get saved, then it has much less of a chance of being studied in the future.”

Thomas said she wants the collection to become a mid-level repository for student research. Michigan and Ohio State Universities have two of the largest university comic book collections, each with more than 200,000 titles, according to their respective Web sites.

The collection of non-circulating material includes a wide range of comic books and graphic novels.

Though some date back to the 1930s, such as the pre-“Batman” “Black Bat”, Thomas said the collection is strongest in Marvel and DC comics published in the 1970s and after.

This includes all of the major titles, like “Batman,” “X-Men” and “Spider-Man,” but also less mainstream comics, like “Birds of Prey,” “100 Bullets” and “Preacher.”

She said the Vertigo line is also well-represented, as are numerous Alan Moore titles such as “Watchmen” and “Swamp Thing.” The collection also includes nearly every issue of Neil Gaiman’s World Fantasy Award winning “Sandman” series.

Thomas said the collection has less Golden and Silver Age comics because their significant market value encourages owners to sell rather than donate them.

The collection also includes some self-published comics, such as Terry Moore’s “Strangers In Paradise.”

“It’s a comprehensive collection of what’s out there now,” Thomas said.

Rick Berg, manager of Graham Crackers Comics, 901C Lucinda Ave., said the more exposure college students have to comic books the better it will be for the business.

He said the library has a good collection and would like to see it expand.

Senior English major Gerardo Torres said he was surprised the library had a comic collection at all.

“I didn’t think it was something they would bother getting,” he said. “I thought they only focused on academic material.”

Currently, a portion of the collection is uncataloged, meaning they are organized by title and date, and are not yet in the library’s online catalog.

Though it is a priority, Thomas said it will take years before the entire collection is cataloged, due to the sheer volume of issues.

“It will be [cataloged] eventually; I am confident of that,” said Thomas. “It’s just going to take a while.”

She encourages everyone to use the collection, whether it be for research or not. She just asks people to have a particular title or series in mind.

Thomas said special collections are dependent on the curator, and she wants the library’s comic book collection to grow.

“My interest in comics and belief that they are an important art form that needs to be documented isn’t going to waver,” she said.