During the course my internship with Grand Teton National Park (GRTE) I have been working with digital images of The Vernon Collection, on display at the Colter Bay Indian Arts Museum.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Laine Thom, a long time naturalist and Interpretive Ranger with GRTE, who has provided a patient and colorful introduction into the world of Indian Art. The following link contains a brief bio on Laine.
http://www.indiansummer.com/artists.htm

Laine has also authored two books, Dancing Colors, and Beoming Brave: The Path to Native American Manhood.
http://www.librarything.com/author/thomlaine

About the Museum:
The collection contains an impressive variety of American Indian artifacts collected by David T. Vernon over his lifetime. The collection was purchased by the Jackson Hole Preserve, Incorporated—a Rockefeller Family foundation dedicated to conservation of cultural and natural resources. Laurance S. Rockefeller loaned the Vernon collection to the National Park Service and requested that the impressive artifacts be exhibited in Grand Teton National Park. The Indian Arts Museum was built to house the collection and it opened to the public in June 1972 with Mr. Rockefeller and Mr. Vernon serving as key dignitaries at the dedication. A few years later, Mr. Rockefeller donated the entire collection to the National Park Service with the stipulation that it continue to be displayed in Grand Teton.

courtesy of Jacki Skaggs, original post at www.gtnpnews.blogspot.com

Last year, a photographer documented the majority of the Vernon Collection for the purposes of cataloging, insurance, and publication. I have been working with Photoshop CS3 to edit the photos in an attempt to transform them to publishable quality. The artifacts were originally photographed on a green cloth, so my primary purpose is to extract the image from the "green screen"so that it might be reproduced on any background. I personally own a copy of Photoshop 7, so my skills have had a personal as well as professional benefit. CS3 is a complex platform capable of great things, and I have to say that I've only done mediocre things so far; however, my learning curve is steep and I know a darn sight more than what I started out with.

Each afternoon, Colter Bay Interpretive Rangers offer a museum talk in which they take visitors through the museum and discuss Native American culture in the Intermountain Region. Resident artists occupy the bottom floor and change on a weekly basis.

Greetings from the Colter Bay Curation Office in Grand Teton National Park. I am currently completing a "cultural resources" internship with Alice Hart, museum curator. I will be here through the second weekend in August. The project I am working on was "inspired" by a directive from the Department of the Interior, or, "the folks in Washington," who have mandated that National Parks step up their record keeping for scientific research being done in Parks. For example, 53 research permits have been issues since January 1, 2009 of those, only 13 permits are new, the rest are classified as "renewals," many of which are issued for longitudinal research. The products of this research, including (but not limited to): specimens, raw data, field notes, dissertations, journal publications, etc. are often lost in the shuffle. Although NPS requires Investigator Annual Reports (IAR's), the bulk of the data may end up in a professor's office, uncataloged and untraceable.  I believe NPS envisions a nationwide publicly accessible (that means you don't pay $40 for access to one journal article) database that includes records of all research completed within Parks--which are, after all, publicly owned.

My work has given me an administrative view of things. I have a working knowledge of research being done in Grand Teton, and better yet I currently live amidst many of those researchers at the AMK Ranch & Research Station run by the University of Wyoming. By interacting with "the butterfly people, "the bark beetle people," and the "bear aware" sociological survey team, I am able to understand the researcher's perspective, get a feeling for their pressures, and communicate more effectively with them when it comes to convincing them that their data is better off cataloged at their home institution than sitting in a milk crate in their lab.

While the government is all about asserting ownership of data produced on public land, I believe in its democratic purpose, which is to further education, scientific research, and the ecologic health of our world.