Library director outlines staffing push and reactivated de-escalation training

Bryce Lemelle, the library director, told the commission the department is actively recruiting a library assistant for the El Dorado Hills branch and has recently onboarded an extra-help page to support all branches. "We subscribed to an online training...and we reactivated that training series again," he said, describing a one-year subscription that includes monthly live sessions and recorded modules.

The training covers trauma-informed practices, de-escalation and working with people experiencing homelessness, Bryce said, and "so all library staff have access to this now." He said the program is intended to help staff focus on welcoming spaces and how the behavior policy applies in public areas. The director also described forthcoming changes to patron-facing IT workflows — Placerville will be a pilot site — intended to improve patron privacy and IT security, with a broader rollout planned in the next few months.