The new director of the Oswego Public Library District is extremely knowledgeable about the library district’s operations.

At the Nov. 19 Oswego Library Board meeting, trustees unanimously approved hiring Krista Katzen as the district’s new library director with a starting annual salary of $132,500.

Previously, Katzen had been serving as the district’s assistant director since the fall of 2019.

“She’s been an integral part of all the projects we’ve been working on,” Oswego School Board President Terry Tamblyn said.

That includes adding study rooms to the district’s downtown Oswego campus in 2023.

Previous Oswego library director Sarah Skilton retired in September. She had been with the district since 1994 and had served as its director since 1999.

Since Skilton’s retirement, Katzen has been acting as interim director.

Katzen started with the Oswego Library District in 2007 as an Oswego outreach librarian in the children’s department.

Katzen is anxious to get started in her new role. She is happy to be working for the district.

“A growing town like this has got a lot of energy,” she said. “You see new people coming in all the time. And you see the people you’ve seen every week for 18 years. So you have that nice relationship with people.”

Katzen also noted the district has a strong staff.

She has plenty of goals for the district. That includes trying to increase community participation in the district’s Friends of the Library group, which organizes the district’s used book sales as a fundraiser for the district.

“We would love to get some new members involved with that,” she said. “It’s not a lot of time commitment, but it does really help the library. All the funds they raise go to the library district to support our programming.”

The library district by next year plans to have an outreach vehicle, an idea that Skilton had been working on.

The vehicle will travel to schools, senior centers and other places.

Another project the district is eyeing is the possible construction of a third campus, its second in Montgomery. The district has campuses in downtown Oswego and in Montgomery.

At their June 25 board meeting, board trustees approved buying 15,682 square feet of property at 121 N. River St. in downtown Montgomery for $110,000.

The Library Board purchased the property from the Montgomery VFW.

The property is adjacent to property at 109 and 111 N. River St. the library board purchased in May 2023 for $330,000.

The district plans to have an architect draw up plans for the new campus. The district serves a population of more than 70,000 people and is growing in all parts of the district.

The library district serves portions of Kendall, Will and Kane counties.

“We’ll start architectural drawings because we’ve got to let people know what we’re talking about before we can ask them to support it,” Tamblyn said. “We will have to go to referendum before we build anything.”