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Dialog Details Support of Singapore's World Library Summit

SINGAPORE, 17 April 2002 — Dialog, a Thomson business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions long active in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, today detailed its support of the upcoming World Library Summit (WLS), to be held in Singapore 24-26 April, 2002.

The company said it will use the prestige event as an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to information professionals in Asia.

Dialog is a sponsor of the WLS, which is being organized by the National Library Board of Singapore and co-organized by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore. The conference is expected to attract more than 1,000 information professionals, government leaders and others from across Asia.

"We are delighted to support the WLS," said Ciaran Morton, president of Dialog's Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific unit. "The WLS is an important milestone in the development of the professional information market in Asia. We have many customers in Singapore and elsewhere in the region, and we are committed to helping them grow as professionals and as a community."

At the WLS, Dialog will highlight its worldwide professional development programs for information professionals. The company currently offers its Quantum² initiative in North America and Europe and expects to launch it in Asia, Australia and New Zealand later this year.

The Quantum² program is a professional development effort to provide training and tools to help information professionals enhance their professional development, with a special focus on strategies to develop leadership skills and demonstrate the value of professional information services within organizations. The program enhances a highly successful Dialog program first introduced in 1993. Liz Blankson-Hemans, recently appointed to head the initiative in Europe, will preview the initiative at the WLS.

Other Dialog speakers at the WLS include Stuart Doig, senior vice president of Asia Pacific operations, who will outline the company's strategy for the Asia Pacific region.

Ursual Dowling, part of Dialog's enterprise solutions team, will discuss dynamics of the academic consortia community in the region and the company's programs to best serve them.

Dialog also will demonstrate a number of its products and services, including those launched in recent months, at the WLS.

Among the new products to be highlighted is NewsRoom, an online database that combines 6,500 sources of continually updated news into a unified file that can be searched using one search command.

NewsRoom includes broadcast transcripts, newspapers (including hundreds of regional newspapers from Asia and elsewhere around the world), periodicals, newswires, trade and scholarly journals, and other content sources, in English and seven other languages, drawn from nearly 100 countries. The content pool is continually updated as new articles and reports are added from publishers and information aggregators worldwide.

Dialog also will highlight the new content it has added to its services from the Asia Pacific region in recent months, including editorial material from Australia's John Fairfax & Sons, plus Korean patent abstracts, translated Japanese trademark information and other sources of intellectual property information.

MEDIA: To arrange a product demonstration or to meet with any Dialog representative at the WLS, please contact us.

About Dialog
Founded in 1972 by Dr. Roger K. Summit, a pioneer in developing the technology behind electronic information retrieval, Dialog 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 three online platforms — Dialog®, Profound® and DataStar™ — offer users the ability to precisely retrieve data from more than 1.2 billion unique records, accessible via the Internet or through delivery to enterprise intranets. The content available ranges from articles and reports published in thousands of publications to in-depth repositories of patents, trademarks and other intellectual property data.

Corporate librarians, knowledge managers and other information professionals at more than 25,000 business, professional and government organizations in more than 100 countries prize Dialog services for their breadth and depth of content, precision searching and speed.

Headquartered in Cary, N.C., USA, with direct operations in 32 countries throughout North American, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, South Africa and the Asia Pacific, Dialog is a business of The Thomson Corporation. For more information about Dialog, please visit www.dialog.com. Or, please call Dialog's Asian Pacific headquarters in Hong Kong at (852) 2530 5778.

About The Thomson Corporation
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2001 revenues of $7.2 billion, is a leading provider of integrated information solutions to business and professional markets worldwide. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the Toronto (TSE: TOC) and London stock exchanges.

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

Media contact

Ms. Christina Cheng
Regional Marketing Manager
Dialog
(Hong Kong) (852) 2530 5778

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