Ann Lathrop





'''This is a work in Progress. Help from volunteers will be greatly appreciated.'''

From Bobby Goodson and Sandy Wagner
The following short article written by Bobby Goodson and Sandy Wagner is from a 1984 issue of the California Computer Using educators (CUE) Newsletter.

'''Who Is Ann Lathrop? '''


 * When someone asks, “What’s a SoftSwap?” you can explain about public domain, teacher contributed software and about sharing successful classroom computer lessons. But that really doesn’t tell the story. It is really the vision of someone who saw a need and believed it could be filled!


 * Anyone who really understood how hard it was to work with software for 3 or 4 different machines and duplicate disks (consistently) wouldn’t have seriously considered trying to solve the problem. But Ann Lathrop is a librarian! She met with the CUE Board in January, 1980, and proposed a public domain software exchange called SoftSwap. It is a credit to her vision and organizational ability that the procedures established at that time for acquiring, refining/editing and distributing programs for SoftSwap have changed very little as it has grown. And how it has grown! Sixty-eight disks have been created created for 6 machines (and more announced in this newsletter!) and a total of 12,000+ disks have been mailed to all 50 states and ten foreign countries from the San Mateo Microcomputer Center. This is in addition to the hundreds of disks copied "for free" by educators coming to the Microcomputer Center or to other sites across California.


 * But Ann didn’t stop there. There was a need to have a place to look at software, public domain and commercial, and the Microcomputer Center in the San Mateo County Office (Redwood City, CA) was born. There was a need to find a way to catalog and store software, consistent with other media, and use it creatively—and a book was born (Courseware in the Classroom, written with Bobby Goodson). There was a need to search for software and have critical reviews available on that software—and a journal was born (The Digest of Software Reviews).


 * There was a need to share software ideas throughout the state, and Ann lingered over lunch in Sacramento in 1982 and designed the California State Software Clearinghouse funded by the California State Department of Education, which she now directs out of the San Mateo County Office of Education.


 * And soon you will see the 1984 edition of the Educational Software Preview Guide, compiled and edited under Ann’s direction. It represents the combined evaluations from 18 states currently evaluating educational software at the state or county level. Experts from each evaluation center met at the California State Software Clearinghouse for four days to share evaluations from their states and to create the Guide.


 * Ann, our hats are off to you—you have made a difference!

Up Close and Personal
Comment by Dave Moursund

In the early 1980s when Ann Lathrop entered my doctorate program, she was a well-established professional and leader in librarianship. She had been a fourth grade teacher and high school librarian before accepting her current position as Library Consultant in the San Mateo County Office of Education. Her professional growth in the computer-in-education aspects of librarianship during the time she was in my doctoral program is truly amazing.

The University of Oregon Computers in Education doctorate program at that time required a significant amount of computer science coursework and a variety of research methods courses, such as statistics courses. Most of the students entering the program had a math background. Ann's previous education included math education that ended in high school, and she had only a modest interest in computer science. Her master's degree was in Library Science. She was interested in the "information science" part of the overall field of Computers and Information Science. Her interests and points of view broadened my perspectives and made a significant contribution to improving the program.

It was a pleasure to have Ann as a doctoral student and to follow her career after her degree. She became a Professor in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach, where she was coordinator of the School Library Media Teacher credential program and also continued her work with K-12 software evaluation until her retirement in 1999.

Author or Authors of this Page
The initial version of this page was created by David Moursund.