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Dialog NewsRoom Now Available through Dialog NewsEdge

Dialog NewsRoom Has More Than 7,000 Content Sources

Publications From Around The World Added

LONDON (3 December, 2002) — Dialog, a Thomson (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, said today that its Dialog NewsRoom service, a continually refreshed database of more than 7,000 news sources from around the world, is now available through the Dialog NewsEdge service.

Dialog NewsEdge is an industry-specific, personalised current awareness and news alerting service for corporations. It combines up-to-the-minute news, analysis and research culled from thousands of global sources with customised editorial relevance ranking, personally managed by highly experienced editors specialising in specific industry sectors.

With the addition of Dialog NewsRoom, Dialog NewsEdge users can now jump quickly from an up-to-the minute news alert to the Dialog NewsRoom database to find related recently or archived published articles.

Dialog made the announcement at the Online Information 2002 conference, the world's largest gathering of information industry professionals.

Launched in March 2002, Dialog NewsRoom is a unified database of news sources that may be searched simultaneously using a single search command. Content sources include broadcast transcripts, newspapers (including hundreds of newspapers from around the world), periodicals, newswires, trade and scholarly journals, and other content sources, in English and ten other languages, drawn from nearly 100 countries. A large proportion of sources have archives going back to 2000, with some extending back to 1990. Document pricing is $2.95 per document, with unlimited usage subscription pricing available.

"With Dialog NewsRoom, we set out to build the most comprehensive online news service, offering users a wide range of both big picture and grassroots perspectives through local and regional coverage," said Viji Krishnan, Dialog vice president for content development. "Adding Dialog NewsRoom to Dialog NewsEdge creates a powerful combination of information resources for Dialog NewsEdge users."

Dialog NewsRoom Widely Available

In addition to Dialog NewsEdge, Dialog customers may access the news service through a variety of other Dialog services. It is a stand-alone Web-based service (www.dialognewsroom.com) available through subscription, and also a component of other online services offered by Dialog, including:

• the Dialog®-branded platform of online services
• Dialog DataStar™ (Users of the Dialog DataStar service enjoy the added benefit of being able to reformat their retrieved documents to presentation-quality standards through the Dialog DataStar post-processing features.)
• Dialog Profound®
• Intelligence Data InSite^SM

On Standalone: New Publications List Added

Users of the stand-alone www.dialognewsroom.com service can now access Dialog NewsRoom Publications List through the Web-based service.

The regularly updated Publications List is a comprehensive aggregation of more than 7,000 Dialog NewsRoom sources, enabling subscribers to view detailed and timely information on their available sources. It is accessible via the Publications List link on the main dialognewsroom.com 'Search Home' screen.

New Sources Added

Among the recently added content sources (and their countries of origin) now available for full-text searching and article retrieval through Dialog NewsRoom are:

• BUSINESS A.M. (United Kingdom), a weekday newspaper covering Scottish business, government, culture and society, widely read in Scotland and beyond.
  
  
• BUSINESS STANDARD (India), publishers of Business Daily, India's premier business newspaper with regional editions in major Indian cities, and supplements covering such topics as investments, management and marketing, new economy, leisure and motoring.
  
  
• EMERALD (United Kingdom), publishers of the world's widest range of management and library and information services journals. The company's portfolio includes more than one hundred titles.
  
  
• HEREN REPORTS (United Kingdom), produced by specialist energy data reporting service PH Energy Analysis Ltd. Reports cover European energy markets (including electricity and natural gas) in English and German.
  
  
• NEWSPRESS (France), an online distributor of official news releases issued by various units of French government, including regional councils, French representative offices abroad, national government ministries and others. The service distributes approximately 200 stories a day.
  
  
• PRESSI.COM (Finland), a global news release distribution service transmitting news and announcements in multiple languages on behalf of its corporate and governmental customers worldwide.
  
  
• PRIME TASS (Russia), a news service offering its English-language newswire, consisting of about 100 news and analytical articles per day covering general news and business topics in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
  
  
• LE TEMPS (Switzerland), a French-language newspaper published in Geneva, created through the 1999 merger of Le Nouveau Quotidien and Le Journal de Geneve et Gazette de Lausanne.
  
  
• SÜDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG (Germany), a national newspaper covering general, business and political news in Germany and Europe.
  
  

Previously added content sources include many of the world's most respected newspapers, including the Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The South China Morning Post and numerous others.

Dialog said it will continue adding content sources from around the world to the Dialog NewsRoom service.

Imaginative Uses

Users look to Dialog NewsRoom to track general, business, political and specialised types of news and current events. The service can be a platform on which to build current events tracking, competitive intelligence, knowledge management and communications programmes for corporations, financial firms, government agencies, public policy organisations, news and research services, universities and others.

"The potential applications of Dialog NewsRoom are limited only by the imagination of the subscribers," said Dialog's Krishnan. "Dialog NewsRoom opens the door to the most comprehensive array of news and current awareness sources available anywhere. It is fast becoming recognised as the premier database of news available online. We're proud of what we've done so far, and are eager to keep building it."

- Ends -

About Dialog
Dialog, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, is the world leader in providing online-based information services to organizations seeking competitive advantages in such fields as business, science, engineering, finance and law.

Today, Dialog's online services - offered through the Dialog®, Dialog Profound®, Dialog DataStar™, NewsEdge and Intelligence Data brands - give users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.4 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. Searchable content includes articles and reports from thousands of real-time news feeds, newspapers, broadcast transcripts and trade publications, plus research reports and analyst notes providing support for financial decision-making, as well as in-depth repositories of scientific and technical data, patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data.

Corporate librarians, knowledge managers, other information professionals and end-users at business, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their depth and breadth of content, precision searching and speed.

Based in Cary, N.C., USA, Dialog has operations in 31 other countries worldwide. For more information about Dialog, please visit www.dialog.com. Or, please call (U.S./Canada) 800-3-DIALOG or (U.S.) 919-462-8600. Dialog's London office may be reached at (44) (0) 207-940-6900.

About The Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2001 revenues of US$7.2 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Thomson provides value-added information, software applications and tools to more than 20 million users in the fields of law, tax, accounting, financial services, higher education, reference information, corporate training and assessment, scientific research and healthcare. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE: TOC; TSX: TOC).

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 with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

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