Liigituse

Liigitus is the systematic arrangement of objects, ideas, or data into groups based on shared properties or criteria. It serves to organize knowledge, facilitate retrieval, and support analysis and communication. The concept appears across disciplines and scales, from natural phenomena to digital information.

In Estonian usage, the term covers both theoretical approaches to classification and practical methods for organizing content. It can be descriptive, describing existing order, or prescriptive, establishing standardized categories and relationships to guide future work.

In biology, liigitus corresponds to taxonomy, organizing life forms into nested levels such as kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. In library and information science, classification systems such as the Dewey Decimal Classification and Universal Decimal Classification arrange books by subject. In data management, taxonomies, ontologies, and controlled vocabularies structure indices and search facets.

Common methods include hierarchical classification, which builds tree-like structures; facet or polyhierarchical schemes, which allow multiple dimensions; and enumerative or analytic approaches that define categories by lists or properties. Consistent criteria and metadata standards enhance interoperability.

Historically, liigitus has evolved from naturalistic and alphabetic orders to formal scientific taxonomies and modern semantic networks. With digital information, classification systems increasingly use formal ontologies, linked data, and machine-processable vocabularies to support retrieval and reasoning.

See also

- Taxonomy

- Classification

- Ontology

- Nomenclature

- Dewey Decimal Classification

- Library classification

- Data taxonomy

- Metadata