At SLA: Dialog To Celebrate 30 Years Of Information Excellence

Dialog, a Thomson (TSX:TOC) business and a leading worldwide provider of online-based information services and integrated information solutions, said today that it will use its participation at the 93rd Annual Conference of the Special Libraries Association (SLA), which begins here tomorrow, to highlight the 30th anniversary of its founding.

The company also said it will preview a soon-to-be unveiled new product, demonstrate recently launched news, e-journal linking and company profiles services, and will highlight improved software and alerting features.

The anniversary celebrations at the SLA conference include a customer appreciation party June 10. Worldwide, anniversary initiatives include a special advertising campaign and customer appreciation events being held in various cities in North America, Australia, Asia and Europe.

The anniversary initiatives commemorate the company's role as a pioneer in the online information industry and its standing today as an innovative, customer-focused and technologically sophisticated leader serving information professionals and their organizations worldwide with information resources that are comprehensive, diverse and in-depth.

"We are a company passionate about the work we do and respectful of the critical role we play in the professional lives of our customers," said Libby Trudell, Dialog senior vice president, information professional market development. "Ours is a unique role in the industry we serve. Since 1972, our growth as the first commercial online service has been both a catalyst for and the product of the evolution of the information professionals' role."

Since its acquisition by The Thomson Corporation in 2000, Dialog has pursued excellence in its products and services, and in its role as a corporate citizen.

The company now offers more than 35 products and services to its approximately 25,000 subscribing organizations worldwide. And the company remains the industry's most forceful proponent for enhancing the role of the information professional through its extensive and free educational and professional development programs.

At SLA

At the SLA conference, Dialog (booth #505) will preview and demonstrate new products and services and highlight improvements to existing services, including:

- A personalized news tracking service, which is expected to be available later this summer. - NewsRoom, an online database that combines a planned 7,000 sources of continually updated news into a unified file that can be searched using one search command. NewsRoom includes broadcast transcripts, newspapers, periodicals, newswires, trade and scholarly journals and other content sources, in English and seven other languages, drawn from nearly 80 countries. Much of the content pool is continually updated as new articles and reports are added from publishers and information aggregators worldwide. - Dialog Company Profiles, a recently launched service that offers one-stop online access to comprehensive profiles of nearly 500,000 companies worldwide. - An expanded e-journal linking feature that allows users of its Dialog(R) service to link seamlessly -- and without cost -- 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. - Version 3.0 of the popular DialogLink(R) telecommunications software package, which provides access to non-Web-based command language online services offered under the Dialog(R) and DataStar(TM) brands, including Classic Dialog(R) and Classic DataStar(TM).

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(R), Profound(R) and DataStar(TM) -- 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 depth and breadth 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 (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.