Conservators are now pondering a long-range strategy for information management. This paper proposes a conceptual software solution, called the Conservation Information System (CIS). The key components of CIS would be: a sophisticated database management system, a conservation data model, a communication subsystem, a graphics subsystem, and a user-friendly operating environment. CIS would support many hardware configurations; CIS would not dictate the choice of hardware. This paper also discusses the authors' progress in areas relevant to CIS.