This volume contains a collection of selected papers presented at the Symposium on Conceptual Modeling, which was held in Los Angeles, California, on December 2, th 1997, immediately before the 16 International Conference on Conceptual Modeling (ER'97), which was held at UCLA. A total of eighteen papers were selected for inclusion in this volume. These papers are written by experts in the conceptual modeling area and represent the most current thinking of these experts. This volume also contains the summaries of three workshops that were held on 6 7 December 1997, immediately after the ER'97 conference at UCLA. The topics of these three workshops are: . Behavioral Modeling . Conceptual Modeling in Multimedia Information Seeking . What Is the Role of Cognition in Conceptual Modeling? Since these topics are not only very important but also very timely, we think it is appropriate to include the summary of these three workshops in this volume. Those readers interested in further investigating topics related to the three workshops can either look up the individual paper published on the Web or contact the authors directly. The summary paper by Chen at the beginning of this volume also includes the summary of several interesting speeches at the Symposium.

Current Issues of Conceptual Modeling: A Summary of Selective Active Research Topics.- Conceptual Design of Parallel Systems.- Conceptual Modeling Challenges for Model-Based Architecting and Software Engineering (MBASE).- Deriving Global Conceptual Views from Multiple Information Sources.- From Ancient Egyptian Language to Future Conceptual Modeling.- Breaking the Database out of the Box: Models for Superimposed Information.- Narratives and Temporal Databases: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.- Using Conceptual Modeling and Intelligent Agents to Integrate Semi-structured Documents in Federated Databases.- Supporting the User: Conceptual Modeling & Knowledge Discovery.- Are Global Understanding, Communication, and Information Management in Information Systems Possible?.- Enterprise Knowledge Management and Conceptual Modelling.- Semantic Modeling in Accounting Education, Practice, and Research: Some Progress and Impediments.- Perspectives in Modeling: Simulation, Database, and Workflow.- The Challenges of Modeling Biological Information for Genome Databases.- Trends and Scale-Up for Data Administration.- Conceptual Modeling for Multiagent Systems: Applying Interaction-Oriented Programming?.- Data and What They Refer to.- The Strength of ER Modeling.- Interaction as a Framework for Modeling.- A Summary of the ER'97 Workshop on Behavioral Modeling.- What Is the Role of Cognition in Conceptual Modeling? A Report on the First Workshop on Cognition and Conceptual Modeling.- Conceptual Modeling in Multimedia Information Seeking.- Future Directions of Conceptual Modeling.