The second unit, a Branch of Museum Operations, would provide leadership and guidance to the parks in the day-to-day maintenance and operation of their museums. The study team proposed that this branch insure unity in standards and procedures to keep Service practice "abreast of the best in the museum field." It would guide all curatorial work within the national park system, offer expert services in acquiring, identifying, authenticating, recording, conserving, and caring for museum objects, and arrange for curatorial training for park employees. The Branch of Museum Development would repair, rehabilitate, and replace existing exhibits in the parks, but Museum Operations would determine when a park needed such work.

The director scheduled the reorganization to take effect July 6, 1964. The two branches were not physically separated; the people involved remained at their accustomed work stations in Tempo S and the old San Francisco Mint. Everhart designated Harold Peterson to serve temporarily as acting chief of the Branch of Museum Development. Peterson retained meanwhile his position as chief curator, which lay in the Branch of Museum Operations. Delay in appointing a permanent Museum Development chief reflected the desire to find someone particularly qualified to make design a strong element in Park Service exhibition. Everhart did hire at once a new chief for the Eastern Museum Laboratory: Russell Hendrickson, whose outstanding work as head of the Agriculture Department's exhibit shop confirmed the impression made during his earlier tenure in the laboratory. Museum Development retained for office staff Bertrand L. Richter as financial management assistant with Forrest McCain as fiscal clerk and Rolla D. Everett as procurement and property management officer with Andrew Summers as procurement assistant. Both eastern and western laboratories became part of the branch, losing only their conservators to Museum Operations. The latter branch had Ralph Lewis as chief, Peterson as chief curator with primary responsibility for curatorial and conservation functions, two staff curators-Vera Craig to concentrate on museum records and furnishing plans and Fred Winkler to search for and acquire specimens, four conservators, and Thelma Wolfrey as branch secretary.

New directions in exhibition constituted the most apparent result of the new order. At the same time, the reorganization freed the Museum Operations staff to concentrate on the critical curatorial needs of park museums.