We are pleased to bring you this collection of papers for the Ninth International Conference on Conceptual Structures (ICCS), representing continued excellence in conceptual structures research. We have adopted the title \Broadening the Base," acknowledging the importance of contributions from scholars in many research areas. The rst ICCS meetings focused primarily on Sowa’s conceptual graphs; in recent years, however, the ICCS conference series has intentionally widened its scope to stimulate research across domain boundaries. We hope that this stimulation is further enhanced by ICCS 2001 continuing the long tradition of lively conferences about Conceptual Structures. We wish to express our appreciation to all the authors of submitted papers, to the general chair, to the members of the editorial board and the program committee, and to the additional reviewers for making ICCS 2001 a valuable contribution to the knowledge processing research eld. We would also like to acknowledge the leadership of Guy Mineau and Bernhard Ganter in providing a solid framework for an open and e ective reviewing process. Very special thanks go to the local organizers for making the conference possible and, furthermore, an enjoyable and inspiring event. We are grateful to the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the University of Karlsruhe for their generous support.