Natural history museums around the world are increasingly committed to comprehensive collections care programmess to ensure the long-term preservation of their holdings. The Peabody Museum of Natural History, provides a useful model of long-range conservation planning based on a conservation assessment survy. The conservation assessment, which evaluated the condition of the collections and the conditions under which they were housed and exhibited, helped the museum to clarify and redefine its mission and goals to include a strong commitment to the preservation of the collections. The conservation assessment then became the central planning tool through which the Museum developed a long-range and far-reaching conservation strategy which is now in its sixth year.