Brenda Chawner is a Canadian-New Zealand library academic specialising in the intersection between librarianship and information technology.

After a BA and MLS at the University of Alberta in Canada, she did a PhD at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand[1] on the use of free and open source software in libraries.

[2] The thesis was an early example of the release of academic outputs under a Creative Commons license.

Chawner worked at the National Library of New Zealand as a systems analyst[3] and later as a lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington.

Between 2011 and 2017, Chawner was the editor of The New Zealand Library and Information Management Journal.