21. A computerized method for responding to a user query, the method comprising: receiving a query from a user; generating a search report including a listing of a plurality of documents that are determined to be relevant to the query; wherein for each document that is not an annotated hit, providing a control element selectable by the user to create a new annotation associated with the hit; receiving one or more annotations related to one or more of the plurality of documents from the user, wherein the one or more annotations include one or more user-entered keywords describing the documents; electronically adding, via a processing device, to a data store the one or more annotations relating to the one or more of the plurality of documents provided by the user in order to create a library of annotations; generating one or more annotation abstracts for the one or more of the plurality of documents based on the one or more annotations, the one or more annotation abstracts comprising one or more portions of a document associated with the one or more hits, the portions of the document relevant to the one or more user-generated keywords describing the one or more hits; accessing the library of annotations created by the user, each annotation being associated with at least one of a plurality of documents belonging to a corpus, each annotation further including user-specific metadata related to one of the plurality of documents belonging to the corpus; classifying the documents according to the one or more annotations; identifying one or more interests of the user based on the classification of the documents related to the one or more annotations; determining an intended scope of the query submitted by the user based on the one or more interests, the intended scope comprising a classification of hits from a plurality of disparate classifications of hits; detecting whether a search term associated with the query is present for each document belonging to the corpus associated with the one or more annotations, wherein a given document is identified as a hit in the event that the search term is present in the document and the document is associated with the intended scope of the query, wherein the user-specific metadata includes a plurality of fields and the query specifies which of the fields are to be considered during an act of identifying documents and which of the fields are to be excluded during the act of identifying documents; electronically identifying, via the processing device one or more hits among the documents associated with the annotations in the fields being considered, wherein each hit is a document from the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query and associated with the intended scope of the query, wherein identifying one or more hits includes comparing the query to contents of each document associated with one of the annotations; determining an inferred rating for each document that is not an annotated hit on the basis of similarity of a hit that is not an annotated hit with one or more annotated hits and a rating of the one or more annotated hits; in response to receiving the one or more annotations, automatically regenerating, via the processing device, the search report to update the search report, the search report comprising: the listing of the hits with un-annotated hits ranked accordingly to the inferred rating of the hits that are not annotated hits and the rating of the annotated hits, and the one or more annotation abstracts, the listing including only hits to documents for which the library has an associated annotation and hits to documents with inferred ratings; and transmitting the regenerated search report to the user.
21. A computerized method for responding to a user query, the method comprising: receiving a query from a user; generating a search report including a listing of a plurality of documents that are determined to be relevant to the query; wherein for each document that is not an annotated hit, providing a control element selectable by the user to create a new annotation associated with the hit; receiving one or more annotations related to one or more of the plurality of documents from the user, wherein the one or more annotations include one or more user-entered keywords describing the documents; electronically adding, via a processing device, to a data store the one or more annotations relating to the one or more of the plurality of documents provided by the user in order to create a library of annotations; generating one or more annotation abstracts for the one or more of the plurality of documents based on the one or more annotations, the one or more annotation abstracts comprising one or more portions of a document associated with the one or more hits, the portions of the document relevant to the one or more user-generated keywords describing the one or more hits; accessing the library of annotations created by the user, each annotation being associated with at least one of a plurality of documents belonging to a corpus, each annotation further including user-specific metadata related to one of the plurality of documents belonging to the corpus; classifying the documents according to the one or more annotations; identifying one or more interests of the user based on the classification of the documents related to the one or more annotations; determining an intended scope of the query submitted by the user based on the one or more interests, the intended scope comprising a classification of hits from a plurality of disparate classifications of hits; detecting whether a search term associated with the query is present for each document belonging to the corpus associated with the one or more annotations, wherein a given document is identified as a hit in the event that the search term is present in the document and the document is associated with the intended scope of the query, wherein the user-specific metadata includes a plurality of fields and the query specifies which of the fields are to be considered during an act of identifying documents and which of the fields are to be excluded during the act of identifying documents; electronically identifying, via the processing device one or more hits among the documents associated with the annotations in the fields being considered, wherein each hit is a document from the corpus that is determined to be relevant to the query and associated with the intended scope of the query, wherein identifying one or more hits includes comparing the query to contents of each document associated with one of the annotations; determining an inferred rating for each document that is not an annotated hit on the basis of similarity of a hit that is not an annotated hit with one or more annotated hits and a rating of the one or more annotated hits; in response to receiving the one or more annotations, automatically regenerating, via the processing device, the search report to update the search report, the search report comprising: the listing of the hits with un-annotated hits ranked accordingly to the inferred rating of the hits that are not annotated hits and the rating of the annotated hits, and the one or more annotation abstracts, the listing including only hits to documents for which the library has an associated annotation and hits to documents with inferred ratings; and transmitting the regenerated search report to the user. 25. The method of claim 21 further comprising: receiving from the user a selection of a subset of the library of annotations to be searched, wherein the act of identifying one or more hits is performed only for annotations in the selected subset of the library.