Book excerpt: These proceedings comprise the contents of a major international conference on Perspectives of the Interacting Boson Model. Occasioned by the 20th Anniversary of this model, and attended by approx. 130 scientists from 29 countries, the topics focused on current and future research, which relates to the IBM. This model has now become one of the standard approaches to nuclear structure and has helped usher in a renaissance in that field and a new, unified perspective that focuses on dynamical symmetries and the key role of the valence nucleons. The algebraic approach fostered by the model is being extended to other fields, including nuclear reactions, molecular physics and baryon structure.