Book excerpt: To make full use of the ever increasing hardware capabilities of modern com puters, it is necessary to speedily enhance the performance and reliability of the software as well, and often without having a suitable mathematical theory readily available. In the handling of more and more complex real-life numerical problems in all sorts of applications, a modern object-oriented de sign and implementation of software tools has become a crucial component. The considerable challenges posed by the demand for efficient object-oriented software in all areas of scientific computing make it necessary to exchange ideas and experiences from as many different sources as possible. Motivated by the success of the first meeting of this kind in Norway in 1996, we decided to organize another International Workshop on Modern Software Tools for Scientific Computing, often referred to as SciTools'98. This workshop took place in Oslo, Norway, September 14-16, 1998. The ob jective was again to provide an open forum for exchange and discussion of modern, state-of-the-art software techniques applied to challenging numerical problems. The organization was undertaken jointly by the research institute SINTEF Applied Mathematics, the Departments of Mathematics and Infor matics at the University of Oslo, and the company Numerical Objects AS.