WiLS December 2015 Vendor Partner Interview: Ron Maas, StarWalk Kids Media

At WiLS, we want to bring valuable information to our library partners, including information about the missions and big ideas of the vendors they may already do business with.  Each month, WiLS interviews a vendor partner in order to bridge the gap and open the door to valuable collaborations.  This month, we are delighted to share insights from Ron Maas, National Director of Customer Experience at StarWalk Kids Media, a Gold WiLS Vendor Partner!

Tell us about your company’s background.

StarWalk Kids Media was co-founded in 2012 by Seymour Simon and Liz Nealon.   If you work with children’s books in schools or libraries, you already know who Seymour Simon is, and probably have a good selection from his more than 270 science books written for children in your collection.  His partner, Liz Nealon, has a deep background in children’s programming from her work at PBS, including serving as Creative Director for Sesame Street,  and Executive Producer for Ghostwriter and The Famous Jett Jackson. Together, they had a vision for developing eBooks for children that would be more than just replicas of the printed page, featuring studio-quality narration, and which would be priced affordably for schools and libraries.  Seymour’s background as a teacher, along with Liz’s experience as a producer, influenced everything we did in those early days, from correlating all of our titles to the Common Core State Standards, to developing the first publisher subscription model featuring unlimited simultaneous access for eBooks used in libraries.  He and Liz believed strongly that eBooks would only take off in the classroom and library if they could be priced affordably, and the subscription model we settled on achieves that goal, delivering over 575 titles in English and Spanish to schools and libraries around the world.

Why do you, personally, choose to work with libraries?

I’ve worked with books and eBooks most of my professional life, but one of my all-time favorite jobs was driving the Bookmobile and delivering Outreach library services to rural, disabled, and elderly patrons for the King County Library System in Washington. I saw first-hand how the right book at the right time could enrich patrons’ lives, and was able to work closely with a terrific team of dedicated librarians who felt the same way.  Some years later, I became General Manager and Publisher for Libraries Unlimited, where we published 50-60 titles per year that were designed to help librarians and teachers improve their services and skills.  I’ve met hundreds of librarians over the last two decades, and have grown to understand and appreciate the dedication and sacrifice they bring to work with them every single day.

What do you like to know about the libraries you work with? What helps you better understand their needs?

Whether our eBooks are used in the library or the classroom, we love hearing about how teachers and librarians are using our eBooks with children.  One of the biggest problems in children’s eBooks is discoverability, so one of our most important features allows advanced users (teachers and librarians) to create highly specialized reading lists based on a combination of content, reading levels, and CCSS goals, and then push these lists out to individual students.  This can be especially useful in developing and improving reading skills for those students reading below their age or grade level.  Another problem area can be access: we don’t like putting any barriers between children and the eBooks they want to read, so we don’t require check-in/check out systems or waiting lists.  We want to keep things as simple and as intuitive possible. No matter which way libraries choose to authenticate their users; student IDs, cardholder numbers, MARC records, we support them all, whatever is easiest for the kids to remember and use.  As a Missouri computer lab teacher recently pointed out, “I have just 20 minutes with each group of students, but with your program, I know that they can quickly be reading with little instruction and without my help.  Just three clicks and they are reading!”

What big ideas are being worked on at your company? What problems are being solved?

We are currently working under a National Science Foundation grant to develop the StarWalk Writer, a completely new, cloud-based collaborative writing environment that enables children in grades 3 through 8 to collaborate in real time to create nonfiction writing that will be published in a student-created, community published database.   The Writer will help to make learning and teaching reading and writing in complex nonfiction subject areas like science and social studies more effective and exciting for students, and will be supported by both the StarWalk Kids Media eBook collection as well as materials from other publishers and reference providers.

We’ve also recently launched a Spanish Bilingual collection that is designed to pair eBooks in English and Spanish to support ELL students and readers.   This collection will grow in the coming years, and is available separately or combined with our main collection.

How can librarians become partners in product or training development?

We love hearing from our libraries about what is working or not working in their eBook environments.  We are a very nimble and responsive company, and we’ve made a number of key improvements over the last twelve months that had their origins in suggestions from users.

Do you have anything else you’d like to share here? 

Yes, we would like all of your members to know that we will be re-opening the PopUp Library again this year from December 23 through January 3 to support student reading over the holidays.  For those of you unfamiliar with the program, the PopUp Library provides a completely open pass to read any or all of our titles without requiring a username or password for browser access.  Visitors just need to open a web browser to http://www.starwalkkids.com/PopUp and start reading.    You can find out more about the PopUp Library here: http://starwalkkids.com/extras/articles/89-articles/846-the-winter-popup-library-returns.html