Typically the thesis is based on a series of peer-reviewed papers submitted by the PhD student during grad school. These papers are actually read by people (at

Typically the thesis is based on a series of peer-reviewed papers submitted by the PhD student during grad school. These papers are actually read by people (at least for PhD students in good programs who will need to submit to good journals). The thesis is just proof to your thesis committee that you can write a comprehensive treatment of your area, and to put all of your results in one place for their convenience. It doesn't matter if only a few people read it. It is a little strange to store them all in a library somewhere, given that they won't really be read again, but I suspect this is just a carry-over from a different time when this made sense (eg. before Google made it so easy to find all of someone's papers). The above is based on experiences in STEM, probably things are different for liberal arts people.