Brenda Mitchell-Powell earned her PhD from Simmons University in Archives Management as an American Library Association Spectrum Fellow in 2015. She received her M.S. in Library and Information Science, also from Simmons University, as an ALA Spectrum Scholar in 2008. She received a 2017 Library History Round Table Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Merit Award, as well as a Certificate of Appreciation for Outstanding Service from the Afro-American Studies Librarians Section of the Association of College and Research in 1993. In 2009, Mitchell-Powell was elected to Beta Phi Mu, the international library and information science honor society.
After her tenure as editor-in-chief of Small Press™ magazine, the international organ of the independent publishing community, she created, edited, and produced MultiCultural Review, an international education and library resource, for Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. under the auspices of Orange Ball Corporation, her editorial services company. MultiCultural Review was selected as one of “The Ten Best Magazines of 1991,” by Bill Katz for Library Journal.
Currently an independent scholar and researcher, Mitchell-Powell served as a contributor, writer, editor, reviewer, and consultant for several national and international publications, as well as for city, state, federal agencies, literary councils, publishers, cultural organizations, and professional associations. She served as organizer and co-chair of the review committee established to present the first annual book awards for the Black Caucus of the ALA, and she has been an invited participant in seminars for several colleges and universities.
Her essays on Black history and culture and her reviews of educational materials, literary titles, children’s books, and library resources have appeared in a variety of trade and professional publications. Her most recent publication credits include a book review of The Development of Southern Public Libraries and the African American Quest for Library Access, 1898‒1963,” by Dallas Hanbury; for Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 5, no. 2 (Fall 2021): 283‒87; her book Public in Name Only: The 1939 Alexandria Library Sit-In Demonstration (Amherst MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2022), which won the 2023 Special Merit Award from the Alexandria Historical Society; and a book review of The Library: A Fragile History, by Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen, for Libraries: Culture, History, and Society 7, no. 2 (Fall 2023): 216‒22.