All three agencies cooperated to achieve a coordinated goal and meet a single deadline. Their respective planners and production workers could not avoid some friendly rivalry, for the same public would visit all the new facilities and could be expected to compare them. Although each agency employed a variety of interpretive media including museum exhibits, the state park emphasized living history techniques in the reconstructed fort, village, and ships; Colonial Williamsburg its strong system of guided tours featuring refurnished historic buildings splendidly introduced by the new film; and the Park Service the carefully preserved integrity of its historic sites for which the museums supplied the primary background interpretation. The Jamestown and Yorktown museum buildings did set a precedent in the Service by including respectable auditoriums with suitably equipped projection rooms. These followed the trend set by Williamsburg but reflected even more the growing desire among Service interpreters to make better use of audiovisual media.

The workload imposed by the 1955 fiscal year program required the Museum Branch to hire more preparators. Several of those taken on for the 1950 projects had left. The laboratory had replaced one of them with Charles W. Dreyer, who had worked for years at the Naval Observatory repairing navigational instruments. He proved a very skillful, patient modeler of miniature weapons for dioramas and a fabricator of fine specimen mounts. Another replacement, Daniel J. Hadley, left just as the 1955 projects got into high gear. Selecting talent for the new program began in December 1954 when William A. Smith transferred from the Army Map Service. He proved to be a good diorama sculptor but also mastered the newest casting techniques, much to the benefit of the laboratory. Russell Hendrickson entered on duty in February 1955 as an accomplished artist. The Service could not retain him long at the time, but he returned later to make a significant contribution to park museum development.

Staff expansion continued with the hiring of seven preparators in late 1955 and early 1956. Frank Spagnolo followed Smith from the Army Map Service and remained with the laboratory for the rest of his career. Paul Enten proved to have less to contribute and did not stay long. Peder Kitti came after painting habitat backgrounds for the new bird hall in the National Museum. He served ably, particularly as a dioramist, until his retirement in 1979. Nelson A. Tinney assisted Willie Liggan with the increasing load of label lettering for several years. The next recruit was an exhibit worker, Edward W. Normandin, who assisted other preparators in routine production tasks. Margery Updegraff, an experienced exhibit artist, transferred from the Bureau of Reclamation to become the principal producer of illustrations, maps, charts, and other two-dimensional graphic elements needed to supplement exhibited specimens. Marilyn Biskin, also hired in February 1956, shared these assignments with her.