Much research is geared to people and events which happened at a particular moment in time, whether five minutes or thousands of years ago. NoodleTools.com – which “provides software that teaches students and supports teachers and librarians throughout the research process”  - identifies these search tools to use when timeliness of information is important:

Today:

Google News: Top news stories auto-generated every 15 minutes

NewsNow: Worldwide news auto-generated every 5 minutes

10×10: Explore machine-compiled single image composed hourly of 100 words and pictures that “matter most” on a global scale

Recent:

Yahoo! News: One month archive with editor-created “roundups”

World News Network: Click a category (below news item) to gather related news or images, select Mon-Sun to track story’s development

Google News: Click on “related” (below news item) to see story’s development

Historical:

American Memory: Search America’s primary source documents and images, browse by topic, time period, medium or place

ipl2: Drill down into the history section or search fewer, broader terms (e.g., “terrorists” not “Righteous Path”)

Digital History: High-quality historical resources, primary sources, multimedia, subject guides

Ancient:

Ancient History Sourcebook: Search online ancient-history texts, images, audio, or browse by region, period (e.g., Persia, Late Antiquity)

ipl2: Drill down into ancient history section or search fewer, broader terms (e.g., “Greece” not “Spartan women”)