This volume contains the papers presented at the First International Sem- tic Web Conference (ISWC 2002) held in Sardinia, Italy, 9-12th June, 2002. The conference followed on from the highly successful Semantic Web Working Symposium held at Stanford University, USA in 2001. A total of 133 papers were submitted to ISWC 2002, comprising 95 research papers, 22 position papers, and 16 system description papers. Each submission was evaluated by at least two referees, mainly members of the Program Comm- tee. This resulted in the selection of 40 papers for presentation at the conference and publication in this volume. Of these, 27 are research papers, 6 are position papers, and 7 are system description papers. We would like to thank the many people who made ISWC 2002 possible. In particular, we are grateful to the following groups and individuals: Je? Pan for help with the conference management software and proceedings; the p- gram committee for their reviewing e?orts and advice on organizational details; Michele Missiko? and Nicoletta Dess´? for conference organization and local co- dination; J´er^ome Euzenat for ?nancial organization and the conference web site; Asunci´ on G´ omez-P´erez for organizing the tutorials; Raphael Malyankar for - ganizing the poster session; Ste?en Staab, Siegfried Handschuh, and Marc Ehrig for organizing semantic markup; Deborah McGuinness and Ying Ding for - ranging sponsorship; and the sponsors themselves for their moral and ?nancial support.