Many of the ISO observers who assembled for this workshop at Ringberg c- tle met for the third time in the Bavarian Alps. At two previous meetings in 1989 and 1990 surveys were only a minor topic. At that time we were excited by the discoveries of the IRAS survey mission and wanted to follow it up with pointed observations using an observatory telescope equipped with versatile instruments. With the rapid development of detector arrays and stimulated by ISO's Observing Time Allocation Committee, however, surveys eventually became an issue for the upcoming mission. In a review paper on Infrared S- veys - the Golden Age of Exploration given at an IAU meeting in 1996, Chas Beichman already mentioned that there are ISO surveys. They were at the bottom of his hit list, while the winners were future space missions (Planck, SIRTF, etc. ) and ground-based surveys in preparation (Sloan, 2MASS, DE- NIS, etc. ). He organized his table according to the relative explorable volume, calculated from the solid angle covered on the sky and the maximum distance derived from the detection sensitivity. Clearly, with this ?gure of merit, ISO, as a pointed observatory, is rated low. Applying the classical de?nition of a survey, i. e. to search in as large a volume as possible for new or rare objects and/or study large numbers of objects of various classes in order to obtain statistical properties, ISO was indeed limited.

The ISO data have been released into the public domain only recently This is the first thorough survey what science can do with them Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
Deep Surveys.- The ISO Mission and Its Surveys.- A New Population of Faint Starburst Galaxies Revealed by 15 ?m ISOCAM Deep Surveys.- Mid-Infrared Properties of Distant Cluster Galaxies as Revealed by ISOCAM.- The European Large Area ISO Survey (ELAIS): Latest Results.- The European Large Area ISO Survey: ISOPHOT Final Analysis Number Counts.- Japanese Deep Surveys with ISO.- ISO Deep Far-Infrared Survey in the Lockman Hole.- FIRBACK Source Counts and Cosmological Implications.- Deep Far Infrared ISOPHOT Survey in Selected Area 57.- A Deep 12 ?m Survey with ISO.- Extragalactic Background.- The Extragalactic Background and Its Fluctuations in the Far-Infrared Wavelengths.- Cosmic Infrared Background: ISOPHOT FIR Source Counts at 90, 150 and 180 ?m.- Near Infrared Extragalactic Background.- Power Spectrum Analysis of Far-Infrared Sky Brightness in the Lockman Hole.- A Local Infrared Perspective to Deeper ISO Surveys.- The Role of Luminous Infrared Galaxies at z ? 1 as Revealed by the 15 ?m Extragalactic Background Light.- Evolutionary Models.- The Star Formation History of the Universe.- Implications of the Cosmic Infrared Background for the Redshift Distribution of Infrared Galaxies.- Models for the Infrared Emission from Starburst Galaxies.- IR Surveys with the Infra Red Imaging Surveyor (IRIS).- The Effect of Dust Evolution on the Spectral Energy Distribution of Galaxies.- Object-Oriented Surveys.- The ISOPHOT View of Quasars and Radiogalaxies.- Infrared Properties of High Redshift and X-ray Selected AGN Samples.- A FIR Surveys of CSS and GPS Radio Galaxies.- Seyfert Galaxies in the Far IR.- The Nature of Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxies.- ISO Spectroscopy of Active Galactic Nuclei.- First Results of the ISO Photometry of 12 ?m Active Galaxies.- C II158 ?m Observations of a Sample of Late-Type Galaxies from the Virgo Cluster.- Smoke in the Smoke Rings: ISO Observations of Dust in Collisional Ring Galaxies.- NIR Spectroscopy with the VLT of a Sample of ISO Selected Hubble Deep Field South Galaxies.- Complementary Surveys.- ISOPHOT 170 ?m Serendipity Sky Survey: The First Galaxy Catalogue.- Chamaeleon's Cold Cloud Cores.- The ISO-IRAS Faint Galaxy Survey: ISOCAM Imaging and Optical Spectroscopy.- The ISOCAM Parallel Mode.- Data Reduction Techniques for the ISOCAM Parallel Survey Challenges and Solutions.- The ISO LWS Parallel Mode.- ISO-LWS Serendipity Survey and Source Catalogue.- Surveys in the Galaxy.- An ISOPHOT Survey of Pre-stellar Cores.- ISOPHOT Far-Infrared Survey of Nearby Molecular Clouds.- A Deep Survey with ISOCAM of the Chamaeleon I Dark Cloud.- Search for Very Young Massive Stars.- Structure and Evolution of Circumstellar Disks Around Young Stars: New Views from ISO.- Present Results of the ISOGAL Survey of the Inner Galaxy.- ISOGAL Survey of Baade's Windows.- The ISOCAM GT Survey of Selected Areas in the Galactic Plane.- Present and Future Surveys.- Extragalactic Surveys Using NICMOS.- Commissioning Data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.- Surveys with SIRTF.- Extragalactic Spectroscopy with SIRTF/IRS.- The FIRST Mission.- Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA).- X-ray Surveys of the Obscured Universe.