Ann Hyde was born Aug. 31, 1930, in New York City, the daughter of John B. and Helen Stranska Hyde. She grew up and went to school in Great Neck, NY. In her senior year, she received the Pepsi-Cola Scholarship after receiving the highest female and 4th overall highest score on that year's exam.

Hyde went on to study at Mount Holyoke from 1947-1948, where she first met her lifelong friend Alexandra "Sandy" Mason. She then attended several institutions, including Wheaton College and the University of Chicago, before entering the University of Kansas in 1958. She completed her undergraduate degree in English at KU in 1960.

During her undergraduate career at KU, Hyde, along with a visiting professor, Bertram Colgrave, and the special collections cataloguer of the Spencer Library, Sandy Mason, discovered and deciphered leaves from two different 11th century Anglo-Saxon manuscripts that were used as padding in a 17th century book’s binding. Hyde and Colgrave published an article on their discovery in the journal Speculum in 1962, which became one of the earliest of Ann’s many contributions to the Kenneth Spencer Research Library.

Working at Spencer during this time, Hyde went on to receive a Diploma of Manuscript Studies from the University of Edinburgh in 1962, and in 1966 she earned a Master of Arts in Library Science from the University of Minnesota. She then returned to Spencer and spent the rest of her career working at the library as manuscripts librarian, retiring in 2000. Ann Hyde passed away in June 2014.