When I was at the University of Michigan I took an honors class where we did an undergrad professionalish research thesis. Because it was undergrad and time was a huge factor we were supposed to pick a topic nearly infinitesimal in scope meaning, and research the hell out of it then write the definitive report on the subject. Well I wrote my thesis after hundreds of hours of pouring through old books, papers, and letters. I was pretty happy with what I ended up with and so was the prof. Once it was done and 4 copies published (well technically more like printed out and placed in a Clear Plastic Binder[sup]TM[/sup] because since it wasn’t a grad thesis so I didn’t bother to get it bound or anything) I kept one copy which is stuck in a box somewhere in a closet, one copy kept by the prof(which was cool he almost never asked for a personal copy) one copy put in the thesis section of the library, and one copy given to the department to which the research was most applicable).
Anyway, the other day I was doing a web vanity search on my name, and came across a web published professional paper that uses my paper as a citation. I guess somebody must have ran across it in the library and bothered to read the damn thing. Kind of cool that after all that work I put into it it didn’t completely disappear into irrelevance. I’m giving myself a gold star for fighting ignorance today. 
