P R E S S     R E L E A S E

DialogSelect and Intranet Toolkit Enhanced with New Content & Improved Alerts

CARY, N.C., USA, (October 17, 2001) -- Dialog, a Thomson business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services, today announced content and service enhancements to its DialogSelect(sm) and Dialog Intranet Toolkit products, which corporations and other organizations use in their enterprise-wide information retrieval services.

Dialog Intranet Toolkit enables knowledge professionals -- such as corporate librarians, marketing professionals and Intranet managers -- to create customized sites within their Intranets that make Dialog-accessible databases and files directly available to professionals throughout an enterprise. Custom applications created with this tool enable professionals to search for and retrieve information needed to meet their business responsibilities, such as competitive intelligence, market research, new business development and industry tracking.

Dialog offers a family of information services designed for different types of business information users and markets. DialogSelect is an easy-to-use, menu-driven product that provides access to databases and information files relevant to targeted industries, focusing on business, chemical, intellectual property and pharmaceutical subject areas. Dialog Intranet Toolkit allows customers to customize DialogSelect to work within the enterprise's information system.

"Helping our core constituents of information professionals use DialogSelect and Dialog Intranet Toolkit to successfully deploy information within their organizations is an important strategic thrust for us," said Paul Colucci, Dialog senior vice president of product development. "The enhancements we are announcing today illustrate our efforts to listen to and meet the changing needs of our customers. Improved Alerts allow us to combine Dialog's breadth and depth of content with up-to-the-moment information for customized enterprise delivery."

Dialog Intranet Toolkit Strongest Intellectual Property Service for Enterprises

The new content announced today adds to the Dialog Intranet Toolkit's roster of intellectual property, insurance industry, petroleum industry and transportation-related sources.

New content sources include seven patent-related CLAIMS® databases produced by IFI, which give the Dialog Intranet Toolkit the full array of IFI files available on any Dialog product.

IFI (http://www.ificlaims.com/) is a preeminent producer of patent databases. Noted Harry Allcock, IFI vice president: "Adding the IFI intellectual property indexing to the Dialog Intranet Toolkit for all chemical patents from 1950 forward offers major enhancements for patent searchers throughout the world."

Other new content sources include Derwent World Patents Index Extension; Insurance Periodicals Index; ISMEC (Information Services in Mechanical Engineering): Mechanical Engineering Abstracts; Microcomputer Software Guide; and TULSA™ (Petroleum Abstracts).

The Dialog Intranet Toolkit is the only information service for enterprises that allows users to create custom interfaces incorporating leading premier intellectual property content, such as the databases provided by IFI and Derwent.

Additional enhancements to DialogSelect and Dialog Intranet Toolkit will be unveiled in the near future.

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About Dialog
Dialog is the worldwide leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law. Its products and services, such as Dialog®, Profound® and DataStar™, offer organizations the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 800 million unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise Intranets. For almost three decades, Dialog's brands have been known for their breadth and depth of content, precision searching and speed. The Winter Corporation recently recognized Dialog for its breadth and depth of content when they named the company the Grand Prize-winner in the Database Scalability Program 2000.

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., USA, with direct operations in 30 countries, Dialog products are used by more than 20,000 corporate customers in over 100 countries. Dialog is a subsidiary of The Thomson Corporation, a leading global e-information and solutions company in the business and professional marketplace with 2000 revenues of approximately $6 billion. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE:TOC) and London stock exchanges.

For more information about Dialog, call 1-800-3-DIALOG or visit www.dialog.com. For more information about Thomson, visit www.thomson.com.

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All designated trademarks used herein are the property of The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries. Registered marks are registered by The Dialog Corporation or its subsidiaries, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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