Jan A. Maas recently retired as head of the Education & Job Information Center at the Brooklyn Public Library. He served more than twelve years in the department, advising high school students, and their parents, on college admissions and financial aid. He presented "Going to College" and “Paying for College” workshops in many of the sixty branches of the Brooklyn Library system. From 2000–2007, he maintained the award-winning guideforparents.com website, which provided detailed information about the college admissions process, specifically for parents. He holds a Master of Library Science (MLS) degree from the Department of Information Studies, College of Computing and Information, University at Albany, the State University of New York; a Master in Divinity degree from The General Theological Seminary, New York, NY; and a Bachelor of Music degree from the School of Music, University of Wisconsin–Madison.