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...