Kategorist

Kategorist is a term used to describe a person who practices categorization—the systematic division of items into categories or taxonomies. The word is used in contexts where organizing knowledge or objects is a primary activity, such as information science, library science, data governance, and cognitive science. A categorist may work on developing taxonomies, ontologies, or classification schemes that help structure knowledge, products, or data.

Typical tasks include analyzing collections or datasets, identifying common attributes, defining category criteria, designing hierarchical or facet-based structures, and ensuring consistency and interoperability across contexts. They may also curate metadata, assist in search and retrieval design, and contribute to governance policies that determine how items are classified and updated.

In practice, categorists operate in a variety of settings: libraries and archives; museums and cultural heritage institutions; digital repositories and content platforms; e-commerce and product information management; and research groups focused on knowledge organization. The term is not a standard professional title in many regions; rather, it describes a role or activity that overlaps with librarianship, information architecture, taxonomy engineering, and data curation.

In philosophy, the term is sometimes used loosely to refer to theorists who study categories as a fundamental aspect of thought; in mathematics the closer term is category theorist, referring to scholars of category theory rather than categorization practice.