Bette W. Oliver of Austin, Texas, is an independent scholar with a Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Texas at Austin. A specialist in eighteenth-century France, she is the author of From Royal to National: The Louvre Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale (2007). With an educational background in both journalism and history, she served as the associate editor of the interdisciplinary journal Libraries & Culture from 1986 to 2005. In addition to her work as a historian, she is the author of eight volumes of poetry, much of it about France.