Refdesk
Since 1995, Refdesk is a free and family-friendly web site that indexes and reviews quality, credible, and current web-based resources.

Google Books
In one way tracing back to 1996, but as an official Google project since 2002, Google Books allows one to search the full text of real books just like web search. If the book is out of copyright, or the publisher has given Google permission, one can see a preview of the book, and in some cases the entire text. If it's in the public domain, one is free to download a PDF copy. There are reference pages for every book so one can quickly find all kinds of relevant information: book reviews, web references, maps and more. Google is currently connecting readers with books in two ways: the Partner Program and the Library Project.

Google Scholar
Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google Scholar helps you identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research.

Awesome Stories
Awesome Stories is a new primary-source database, with on-site search, is now available for schools, libraries, educators and students. Its features include 15,000 images plus documents, narrations, video/audio clips and organized slide shows. Incorporated into the text are also secondary sources, such as links to Google Books.

Library of Congress
13 million digital items applicable to all high school subjects and topics.

Country Reports
Concise information about the countries of the world.

CNN
A national news organization

USA Today
A national newspaper