Week One

My fingerprints finally cleared with the FBI on Tuesday so I was able to start work. I attended a Mammoth employee orientation meeting all day on Tuesday, at which different department heads talked about NPS history, rules and regulations, and safety on the job. My favorite speaker was Lee Whittlesley, the park historian, who spoke about the Grand Tour of Yellowstone, in which early park visitors traveled from hotel to hotel in horse drawn carriages over the course of a week or so. I loved hearing the visitors' descriptions of the park - people don't write like that anymore!

On Wednesday, I arrived at work at 7 AM and headed out with Colleen, the museum curator, to get signed in with the Human Resources department and get my ID card, which provides access to the restricted areas of the museum. Right after we arrived at the Human Resources department, the power went out and showed no signs of coming back on, so we headed back to the HRC. The power was still out when we got back to the museum, but it came on right before we left for our second full day of meetings. 

The meeting on Wednesday was for the Center for Resources, the NPS department that the Heritage and Research Center falls under. There were presentations from all the branches of the department, including Environmental Quality, Research, Acquatic Resources and Wildlife, GIS, Resource Management, and last but not least, the HRC. 

Thursday morning Colleen brought me to get my ID card. On the way, we dropped off a fascimile of a poster that has hung over the fireplace at the hotel in Tower-Roosevelt for years. The original was filthy so the museum had it conserved and provided the hotel with a copy to replace it so that the original would no longer be compromised. 

After we returned to the HRC, I did some readings out of my orientation binder, a reference that includes information on the National Park Service, Yellowstone, the HRC, and NPS museum standards. 

Orientation Binder

From 10 AM until around 2:30 PM, all of the HRC employees attended an archives seminar taught by Nancy Merz of the Rocky Mountain Office of the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA). The seminar was a great introduction to archives practices and procedures and I really learned a lot. 

For the remainder of the afternoon, I set up my NPS email account and took the internet security training, which taught me the rules and regulations for working on a government computer. Now that I am able to work and have finished attending all the orientation meetings, I am really looking forward to doing actual museum work next week!