The concept of peer review is very simple: As part of the MAP and accreditation programs, AAM matches up museums that need a bit of helpful advice with professionals who have some advice to give. As an outsider, the peer reviewer is able to offer a disinterested opinion on what the museum is doing well and how it might improve in other areas. The peer reviewer receives background information on the museum in advance, makes a short visit in person and then writes a report.

For that first review, I was assigned to a small museum in Illinois. AAM mailed me the Collections Management Museum Assessment Program (MAP) manual, then called MAP II, and a fat notebook bulging with self-study documents for the museum. With a heavy sigh, I dutifully sat down and read through everything, mystified as to just how this mass of information was supposed to be turned into a useful report. But buried in the bottom of the packet I found a neat little triangular sticker in blue and white that said PEER REVIEW. I stuck it on my portfolio, immediately felt very professional and boarded the plane for Chicago.

The small town in Illinois turned out to be a very long way from the airport, and it was late by the time the limo got me to the hotel, so I had the luxury of an entire evening to watch mind-numbing hotel TV and fret about the assessment. Would the blue and white sticker really be enough to fool them into believing I knew what I was doing? Early the next morning, the museum director came to pick me up.

I soon learned Secret #1 of Peer Reviewing: It is far easier to be the assessor than the assessed. You arrive with only one thing on your agenda, and you can stay focused all day. Your host, by contrast, has to keep you and the 27 people you are supposed to talk to on schedule and keep you watered and fed—not to mention dealing with a thousand normal workday concerns.

Back home a few days later, I sat down to write my report. The Peer Reviewer Manual was a big help, but I felt like a doctoral student on an open-ended fellowship—I could easily keep writing on this topic forever. I set out to be as thorough as possible, to do the kind of job I would want a peer reviewer to do for me. The Museum Assessment Program's extravagant honorarium ($200 in those days) quickly approached the dollar-an-hour range. Hoping to avoid overweight charges, I sent my report off to AAM and awaited word.

When at last word came, it was that my report was certainly, well, detailed. I discovered Secret #2 of Peer Reviewing: There is no limit to the amount of sage advice you can provide, but there is a limit to the amount that the museum can process, and you must find it. Do a really good job, but don’t bog down in the details.

Secret #3 of Peer Reviewing is probably everyone’s favorite: The first report you write is by far the hardest. For the second, you can work from your boilerplate, and things get much, much easier.

If I’d thought the town was a long way from anywhere, it was only because I had not yet been to the town in Minnesota where AAM sent me next. To get there, you fly to Sioux Falls, S.Dak., on a very small plane and then ride for a couple of hours across the prairie in a rattletrap old van. The airline was so small that the same young woman who checked me in at the ticket counter also served as flight attendant and then helped unload the luggage from the plane. That is, she helped unload all but my suitcase, which raised the interesting question of how the airline could manage to lose a suitcase with just 20 passengers. But at least I learned Secret #4 of Peer Reviewing: Always put some clean underwear and a toothbrush in your carry-on bag.

The museum in Marshall consisted of just two rooms, which made me wonder where AAM would send me next. Could there possibly be a more isolated one-room museum that qualified for MAP? But no matter how small or how large, any museum can benefit from an assessment, so I dutifully assessed the assets of the museum’s small but much-used collection.

My next assignment was in a larger university museum. Upon arrival, I suddenly found myself needing the sort of tact that does not come naturally to me. The museum was in imminent danger of being closed, and most of the faculty who had nurtured it over the years were retiring. The sadness that hung over the enterprise was palpable. Each of the faculty-curators thought that the collection he or she had devoted a lifetime to building was to be dumped and his or her classes would no longer be taught. (Fortunately, the museum did survive, with some consolidation.)

Here I learned Secret #5 of Peer Reviewing: Prepare to do a lot of listening. Your hosts have sought the review because they really care about their collections, so it is important to listen to their history, their concerns and their plans. And their gripes. Although your job is to report fairly, not mediate disputes, do keep in mind that your report may well have a critical impact on the museum’s future if you can help the staff define the institution’s role. On more than one occasion, following my interview with a museum director or chairman of the board or university president, a staff member has whispered excitedly to me, “Thank you for saying that! I’ve been trying to tell them that for years, but they’ll listen to you!” Thus bringing us to Secret #6 of Peer Reviewing: As an outsider, you will be listened to more carefully than the museum staff. So make sure you deliver a clear message. Once you get back home to your own institution, you will be ignored again, so enjoy being taken seriously while you can.

Most of my MAP assignments have been at museums that were actually doing well and just needed confirmation of their direction and a bit of help locating resources. But occasionally you see things that leave you scratching your head in wonder, such as the punching bag hanging in the safety shower (rendering the shower unusable) adjacent to the preparation area where acids and other chemicals were in use, or the museum whose security guards were so intent on their job that they refused to let most of the visitors in. Or the museum that had used so much naphthalene in the cabinets that I became nauseated and dizzy while looking at the collections. Suffice it to say that my reports for these museums required a few extra attachments.

A couple of colleagues of mine once had the idea to start a business as museum insultants because that would be a lot easier than being museum consultants. Rather than expending a lot of energy trying to tell museums how to do things better, their idea was just to walk through the museum and say, “Well, that is really stupid” and “Any idiot could do better than that.” Sometimes outside assessors do sound that way unintentionally. But the positive approach mandated by AAM in assessments is extremely effective, and I have used it extensively in teaching collections care in Latin America, Asia and the United States. Just as AAM does, I tell workshop participants that they can’t say “Don’t use PVC plastic.” Instead, they should say, “You can improve the care of the collection by replacing PVC with polyethylene.” Problems must be described in a nonjudgmental way, and accompanied by suggestions for corrections. This can sometimes tax your diplomatic vocabulary, but a positive message is always better received than a negative one. It resonates better with administrators, too, for them to hear that collections care can be improved rather than that staff are doing things wrong.

Though a rare occurrence, assessments in other countries bring their own challenges, such as the time I inadvertently became involved in a voodoo ceremony, or when I was asked to carry specimens back to the U.S. illegally right after my talk to the museum staff about ethics. Or there was my first non-English assessment, which I did was for a museum in South America. The person in charge of the collections was a close friend. She explained that it was crucial that my assessment be completely objective. If anyone thought she had influenced my report, it would not be taken seriously. “So,” she said, “you have to do the assessment and write the report entirely on your own, in Spanish.”

Fine, I said, I’ll give it to you when I’m done to check the spelling and grammar. She shook her head no. “You must write the report yourself, without my help, and give it to the director.” I begged to at least have some lowly assistant staff member correct my pathetic Spanish, but she said no and then disappeared completely while I did my work.

My report is still read aloud whenever anyone at the institution needs a good laugh. “The collections want to improve themselves better,” I wrote, “by switching their cardboards and not so humid being.” At least I learned Secret #7 of Peer Reviewing: Take time writing your report because it will be read—and reread.

Being a peer reviewer is not always easy. It requires a serious commitment and a fairly large time investment, but the good that you can do for a museum cannot be measured in such terms. You will learn an enormous amount by looking for ways to improve other people’s museums, things you can apply to your own. You also will meet some wonderful, dedicated fellow museum professionals. With any luck, you may even eat well. My official dinner-with-the-administrator events have ranged from the low of McDonalds in the company of the director’s hyperactive four-year-old to an exquisite meal with a bottle of fine wine at a restaurant on the beach while watching the sun set.

Peer review—it’s good for your peers, it’s good for your profession and it’s good for you.

John E. Simmons was collections manager of the Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center and director of the museum studies program at the University of Kansas. He now works as an independent museum consultant. To learn more, visit the peer review homepage of the AAM website.