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.

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.