A new and welcoming presence has appeared among the familiar shelves and study spots of Georgetown’s library system. On Aug. 30, Alexia Hudson-Ward stepped into the role of University Librarian and Dean of the Georgetown University Library.
Hudson-Ward now leads the dedicated team of librarians who keep Georgetown’s libraries running, succeeding Harriette Hemmasi after her seven years of service. During her tenure, Hudson-Ward hopes to encourage more students to increasingly visit Georgetown libraries by making them more welcoming and accessible, while also ensuring they continue to reflect the university’s values of service and community.
As the former Associate Director for Research, Learning, and Strategic Partnerships at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) libraries, Hudson-Ward comes to the job with extensive experience. For five years, she coordinated work across more than 40 academic departments, labs, and centers, led the library’s public service division and music library, and directed its artificial intelligence strategy.
Her career path, however, was far from linear.
Before becoming a librarian, Hudson-Ward worked in communications, journalism, and corporate marketing, including a customer marketing manager position with Coca-Cola. After several years in those industries, she realized she wanted a job that would align more closely with her values and the legacy she hoped to leave behind, she told the Voice.
“I wanted to leave positive imprints,” Hudson-Ward said. “So I spent a lot of time, literally, in prayer and contemplation, thinking about what I wanted to do with my career.”
This reflection brought her back to her second-grade dream of being a librarian.
Though Hudson-Ward already held bachelor’s degrees in English Literature and African American Studies from Temple University, she decided to earn a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She completed the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program and worked in the Pennsylvania State University library system as a tenured associate librarian before stepping into leadership positions at Oberlin College and MIT.
Hudson-Ward said she was compelled to join Georgetown because of its loyalty to its core values. She said that she sees Georgetown as an institution that isn’t afraid to confront questions about access to information, equity, inclusion, and social justice.
“What drew me to this particular opportunity, especially at this critical moment in history, is the way in which Georgetown remains very clear-eyed and very articulate around its values,” Hudson-Ward said.
Head of library outreach, Beth Campolieto Marhanka, said that Hudson-Ward’s passion for making Georgetown’s library system more accessible is already apparent.
“In addition to meeting with leadership across the University during her first month at Georgetown, she’s also met with hundreds of faculty, students, and staff in committees and departments across campus to understand what people want from a 21st-century library,” Markhanka wrote to the Voice.
Alongside meeting with members of the Georgetown community, Hudson-Ward is jumping right in to improving campus’s physical library spaces. This includes working closely with the team renovating Lauinger Library on upcoming projects, including the reopening of the restored Pierce Reading Room in January, the expansion of special collections, and other accessibility improvements. These improvements, which will run through December 2025, will include updated seating, modernized elevators, and renovated restrooms on the second and fourth floors of Lau; a more accessible lower-level entrance is also being considered to allow for easier access, Hudson-Ward said.
The library administration hopes that Lau can increasingly become a third space—gathering places outside the dorm or classroom—for students. The ongoing renovation efforts aim to further this goal, but Hudson-Ward said that students are already taking advantage of these spaces.
“Our libraries are bustling with activity,” Hudson-Ward said.
As Lau approaches its 230th anniversary, Hudson-Ward hopes to balance new ideas with a commitment to building on Georgetown’s Jesuit values. Among these values, Hudson-Ward said that care of the whole person and the pursuit of knowledge can be explored through the library’s archives and other learning resources.
“What a great time to celebrate this remarkable university being committed to having an outstanding library that provides so many pathways to access and excellence for students and faculty and researchers and staff,” Hudson-Ward said.
While Hudson-Ward said that there are many exciting things on the horizon for Georgetown’s libraries, she also said that things like misinformation, disinformation, and AI pose challenges to library system managers. She said that she sees libraries as conveners of these new, complicated issues, and that they can serve as places to guide further discussion on these topics.
Concerns about the future, including the environmental detriments of AI and increasing misinformation, also shape Hudson-Ward’s love for literature. Her favorite book is Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, which describes a society affected by corporate greed and economic inequality as government institutions have disintegrated.
She read the novel when she was an undergraduate, but finds it just as relevant today.
“We’re absolutely living that. We’re seeing how prophetic and how futuristic her lens was, and in an almost kind of chilling way,” Hudson-Ward said.
Yet, beyond her concern, Butler said that humans have the capacity to be adaptable and resilient in times of societal challenges, which she believes is exemplified through libraries.
“I continue to be inspired by the international love of the symbolism of what a library represents,” she said. “There seems to be this idea, or this universal appreciation for a repository of knowledge.”
