SERVICE FOR ACCEPTING AND SELECTIVELY EXPOSING USER-CREATED LISTS OF ITEMS

Information retrieval systems and methods are disclosed for presenting items of interest to a user of a computer-based data repository, where the items are presented in the form of lists generated by other users. Users of a data repository may generate lists of items from the repository that are accessible by other users. In various embodiments, users generating lists may add supplemental commentary about the items and other personalizing information. The information retrieval systems and methods store the user-generated lists for future presentation to other users. When a user of the data repository submits a search query, items returned in the query's results are interpreted to be items of interest to the user, and in response, one or more lists determined to be similar to the items of interest are presented to the user.