Most clients use either BISAC (US industry standard) or BIC (UK industry standard) codes to manage their categories.
Occasionally, clients prefer to use their own set of custom categories instead, for example ONIX-held custom categories, thema
You can chose to use single-tier or two-tier category functionality i.e. are you only interested in showing your top-level categories (e.g. "Architecture") - single-tier - or would you also like to pull through sublevel categories (e.g. "Architecture - Buildings") - double-tier. Your metadata need to be compiled correctly based on the category tier you'd like to use