kategorisystem

A kategorisystem is a structured framework used to organize items into categories to support navigation, search, retrieval, and analysis. It provides a shared vocabulary and a defined relationship between concepts, enabling users to find related items and understand their context.

Key terms include taxonomy, ontology, and thesaurus. A taxonomy is a tree-like or stage of categories; an ontology includes relationships and rules; a thesaurus provides controlled terms and synonyms. Categorization can be hierarchical, polyhierarchical, or facet-based.

Models: hierarchical taxonomy organizes items into parent-child categories; polyhierarchical allows multiple parent categories; facet-based systems let users refine by multiple independent attributes (e.g., color, size, brand).

Components: categories or terms; metadata and tags; mapping between systems; governance processes for naming and versioning; metadata schemas and ontologies; user interface for navigation.

Applications: libraries, museums, and archives for discovery; e-commerce and media sites for product navigation; enterprise data management and knowledge graphs; government portals and research databases.

Design and implementation: define domain and scope; choose model; develop taxonomy with plain language labels; create controlled vocabulary; assign items; establish governance and change management; plan multilingual support; test with users.

Challenges: balancing granularity, handling ambiguity, keeping it up to date, scalability, alignment across languages and domains; performance and maintenance costs.

Example: a simple two-level taxonomy for an online store: Electronics > Computers; Electronics > Phones; Home > Furniture.