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Dialog Expands Scientific & Technical Content Collection

CARY, N.C., USA (October 4, 2002) — Dialog, a Thomson business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, today said that it will be adding or enhancing more than 10 scientific and technical files of content, expanding its already formidable collection used by information professionals and researchers in scientific and technical libraries in the pharmaceutical, manufacturing, engineering, intellectual property and related industries worldwide.

New files to be added or enhanced include: market research from Adis International; evidence-based journals from BMJ Publishing; Catfile Plus; Controlled Trials Register; HealthScout; National Patent Databases from Germany, France and the United Kingdom (provided in native language with integrated English language machine translations); Regulatory Affairs Journal from PJB Publications; and an expanded version of ToxFile. Negotiations continue with information providers to add more content sources in the future.

Additionally, The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews currently available on Dialog DataStar will be made available to Dialog users in 2003, providing access to one of the most important sources in evidence-based medicine. The agreement with Cochrane signaled Dialog's commitment to evidence-based medicine, one of the fastest growing areas of medical interest. The journal from BMJ Publishing and the Controlled Trials Register will round off this collection.

Also, the IMS R&D focus file will be enhanced with images, and American Medical Association journals will be launched on Dialog DataStar by the end of 2002.

"For 30 years, Dialog has been the world leader in providing scientific and technical information, and we are committed to building on that proud heritage," said Roy M. Martin, Jr., Dialog president and CEO. "We are the largest and most comprehensive online aggregator of scientific and technical information in the world, and we will continue to maintain our leadership position by adding appropriate information as it becomes available. Our investments in adding and retaining premium scientific and technical content remain a high priority."

In the last year, Dialog has completed a number of initiatives to improve its scientific and technical information, Martin added. Those initiatives include:

• Providing DialogWeb Guided Search customers with the capability to order displayable abstracts of journal articles, patents and other documents published by Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS®). Announced earlier this year and scheduled for availability later this month, the CAS linking will allow users to request and then purchase multiple corresponding full abstracts when searching CA Search® files (file numbers 308-314, 399). These files include more than 16 million bibliographic references and indexing in chemistry and related science (from 1967 onward) produced by CAS.
  
  
• The addition or enhancement of more than 30 content sources, including databases such as AMA Journals, Adis Clinical Trials Insights, AGROProjects, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effectiveness, images for IMSWorld R&D Focus Drug Updates, Medline, NewsRx, Pharmaprojects, Seymour Cooke, TEME, ToxFile and Weldasearch.

Within the past year, Dialog also launched three new services designed to support information professionals and researchers in scientific and technical fields:

• E-Journal Linking was made available to Dialog customers in February 2002, giving them the ability to link seamlessly to the full texts of more than 8,000 scientific, medical and technical e-journals published by more than 40 leading scientific publishers and information aggregators. The e-journals are primarily peer-reviewed scientific, medical and technical publications serving specialized audiences. Ebsco Online, John Wiley & Sons, Science Direct, SwetsNet and Information Quest are among the leading publishers and aggregators whose publications are available for linking.
  
  
• Dialog re-entered the document delivery market in August 2002, vastly expanding the number and diversity of sources from which articles and reports can be delivered and improving the delivery process for documents, including patent documents from around the world. Articles and reports from more than 10,000 scholarly and professional journals can now be ordered for delivery in PDF or print format.
  
  
• Major and long-awaited enhancements to the Dialog Alerts^SM service launched in July 2002. The enhancements include the ability to run single Alerts across multiple files of content sources, automatic removal of duplicates of the same documents retrieved from multiple files, more robust options for the delivery of documents containing images, and improved scheduling, with a new option to specify when an Alert file is to be run. These improvements are particularly important to those who establish Alerts for science files, which have more Alerts created for them than any other type of Dialog file.

The diversity and depth of scientific and technical information available through Dialog services is evidenced in more than 450 separate files, containing a total of more than 470 million science, technical and intellectual property documents. In the intellectual property arena, Dialog provides more than 44 million patent records, including 10 million copyright records, more than 4.5 million patents images published since 1978, as well as nearly 14 million trademark records from 15 countries. In scientific and technical fields, more than 160 million abstracts of research reports and publications from more than 150,000 journals, are available for searching by customers, along with abstracts of more than 1.6 million dissertations and two million conference papers.

"We are proud of the tremendous breadth and depth of scientific and technical sources we have built throughout the years and of our contribution to sci/tech libraries worldwide," said Dialog's Martin. "We will continue to build on our outstanding legacy to further our ability to serve researchers and information professionals in this market."

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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 more than 25,000 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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