Nancy Tystad Koupal is a contemporary scholar on L. Frank Baum. She is the author of Baum's Road to Oz: The Dakota Years (2000), and has edited Baum's series of newspaper columns, Our Landlady, for a modern edition (1999). Nancy Koupal is Director of Research and Publishing for the South Dakota Historical Society. She edits the journal South Dakota History, and also serves as the northern plains editor of The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. She is the co-author, with James P. Ronda, of Finding Lewis and Clark: Old Trails, New Directions (2004).