Kategorists

Kategorists are scholars and practitioners who specialize in the study and application of classification systems. The term is used to describe individuals who analyze how categories are formed, organized, and used to structure knowledge across disciplines such as library and information science, taxonomy, ontology engineering, and cognitive science. Kategorists examine the purposes and effects of categorization, including how categories influence perception, communication, and decision making.

Core activities include designing taxonomy hierarchies and faceted classifications, developing controlled vocabularies and metadata schemas, and evaluating the usability and consistency of classification schemes in information systems. They may work on formal ontologies for knowledge graphs or on practical taxonomies for digital libraries, search interfaces, and data repositories. Methodologies draw on linguistics, logic, cognitive psychology, and human-computer interaction to address issues like granularity, polysemy, boundary cases, and cross-domain interoperability.

Origin and usage of the term vary by field; "kategorist" is not a universally standardized job title. In practice, related roles such as taxonomists, ontologists, information architects, and knowledge engineers perform similar functions. The label emphasizes the study and design of category systems rather than broader data management tasks.

Debates around categorization include tensions between necessary structure and flexibility, the risk of essentialism, and the challenges of keeping category schemes aligned with evolving knowledge domains. As information environments grow more complex, kategorists may work across interdisciplinary teams to balance rigor with usability.