Diana Pietzsch, law librarian at the Munich office of Jones Day, manages every day to juggle an array of responsibilities. As the firm's sole law librarian in Munich, Diana is involved in everything from conducting substantive research to managing the library's finances and planning budgets. Since there are no local colleagues with whom she can share the workload, Diana has learned to rely on her own intuition to solve problems and maintains regular contact with librarians in Frankfurt and other international offices to meet her information needs.

Diana's career experience before becoming a law librarian includes positions in adult education and designing computer-based information programs. For several years, she taught the German language to German and non-German speakers, helping her to develop a solid base of pedagogical experience. Her familiarity with adult learning behavior helped in the next leg of her career -- an information system analyzer -- where she was primarily responsible for designing computer-based training and information programs in connection with in-firm training and education. These two experiences -- teaching adults and designing information databases -- were obviously very beneficial when she made the switch to law librarianship, first at Boesebeck Droste (now Lovells), in 1995; then, with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in 2000; and, now in her present position with Jones Day. Diana's educational background includes a Staatsexamen (State Examination) and M.A., achieved through studies at the University of Konstanz (Germany) and the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis).

Because Diana is the only librarian in her firm, her responsibilities take on a much greater breadth than they would if she had co-workers with whom she could share the work. Thus, on any given day, Diana can be found engaged in such things as selecting and acquiring legal treatises and periodicals; performing substantive research on mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property topics; monitoring news and legal service websites to provide current developments to attorneys; working with librarians in other offices to meet research and informational needs; managing library finances; planning budgets; and organizing the library to be a full-service information center for the firm's lawyers. Staying on top of all of these tasks, as well as meeting the challenges presented by modern information requests that are more interdisciplinary and 'urgent' in nature, keeps Diana very busy. With such a rigorous task list awaiting her each day, Diana does not travel much in her position with Jones Day, but is happy to do so when the opportunity arises.

The formation of the European Union, with its aim to forge deeper connections between European countries, has had an impact on the perception of what is considered 'international' in Diana's legal research projects. For example, it is not unusual to see EU legislation being applied to some German legal issues, thus making EU laws somewhat 'domestic' in nature. Diana claims that about one-third of her research is devoted to international information, including information from the European Union. In researching international topics, including EU research, Diana turns most often to Internet resources, databases like LexisNexis, colleagues in the firm, and other Jones Day offices around the world for help in finding the data. Her only criticism of the materials that she has encountered in this type of research is that they are often available only in the English translation. She would like to see more opportunities to find such materials, especially from the EU, in all published languages.

Like any librarian, Diana has some good stories to share about her experiences in trying to obtain answers to obscure international information requests. Diana fondly refers to one such request as the hunt for 'Chinese lists', because she was seeking a purported 'catalog' of import technology that was prohibited or restricted by the Chinese government. Diana began her search with a link provided in an article that the requesting attorney had read. However, when Diana accessed the site, only random scribbles appeared on her screen and, when she pressed the button for 'English version', the lists were not available. As she delved further into the project, she discovered that the list was apparently not available in English. Not yet ready to declare defeat, Diana then called upon her arsenal of resources, including the German Trade Office in Peking; the Chinese embassy in Germany; and, other Jones Day offices in China. Her last request was to the German embassy in Peking, where she found someone who was able to make an official inquiry to the Chinese Commerce Ministry -- only to find out that, in fact, no official English version of this list was available. But, Diana's strong collegial relationships with other librarians helped her succeed in this request, because she was able to obtain an 'unofficial' version of this list with which her client was satisfied. The moral of the story: You're only as good as your librarian colleagues can help you become.

One of Diana's major goals in her current position is to enhance the 'push services' that are provided to lawyers in her firm. Diana describes these services as essentially providing information and resources to attorneys, on a regular basis, that relate to their topics of interest. Diana knows that this approach will be hard for her to do on her own; thus, she would like to collaborate with other German librarians to collect and distribute the information that she knows would enhance the work of the attorneys in her firm. Diana perceived a need for such services when she noticed that a single German website does not exist to provide comprehensive coverage of legal news. Thus, her clients may have to search a large number of databases to find a fair amount of this information. Diana's goal is to collaborate with other librarians to create a special service to support law librarians in their search for legal news, which would ultimately help the attorneys to stay updated on topics that interest them.

While Diana's library is small, (one person, one location, one thousand books), it covers all areas of law, ('Rechtsgebiete' in German). When Diana is able to escape from the demands of managing the library single-handedly, you might see her climbing a mountainside in the nearby Alps. Diana also welcomes any opportunity to travel, and is hoping to visit Nepal in the not-too-distant future. As the one-woman show in the library of Jones Day's Munich office, Diana is always looking for company -- but be prepared to pitch in and help with some of the office work while you're there!