The books which I am recommending for this course are:

The Art of Electronics  by P. Horowitz and W.Hill.   Second Edition, Cambridge University Press.
This is an extremely good reference for the electronicsto be covered in the course.  It's a first class book for learning how to do electronics, as opposed to rigorous theoretical introductions which often confuse more than they teach - at least until you have crossed a certain threshold. Mathematics is avoided so some other books are needed for some parts of the course.  If you are interested in learning electronics, this is definitely the book to obtain.

Elements of Signals and Systems  by Poularikas and Seely (Second Edition).   PWS-Kent Publishing.  This book has very good coverage of Fourier and Laplace Transform and Sampling Theory.  It is mathematically rigorous, but is also relatively readable, and has plenty of good worked examples.  It contains a lot more than I will cover, but also some material which should be already known.

A recent addition (after the beginning of the course)

Signals and Systems by A. Oppenheim and A. Wilsky, with S. Nawab (Second Edition)  Prentice Hall. This book is rather similar in content to the previous one but I find it much more readable and better organised. It has a lot of nice material in, some of which I can't cover in the time, like communication systems, but which could still be interesting for the dedicated student (if there are any!). It has the added advantage of being plentifully available in the IC library, since it appears to be a recommended text for some engineering courses and it is available in paperback for those who can afford £37.99.

Good Background and Additional Reading

Principles of Electronic Instrumentation by Diefenderfer and Holton.  3rd Edition, Saunders College Publishing.  This was recommended the previous lecturer and seems to be, as he observed, a good general text on instrumentation, sections on noise reduction techniques, aliasing etc.  Mathematically it lies between H&H and P&S.

The Fourier Transform and its Applications by R. N. Bracewell.    This is a useful and  comprehensive text on F-Transform and L-Transform methods and, although a little dated, is very useful.

Radiation detection and measurement  by G. Knoll J. Wiley. Aimed at readers in the nuclear, x-ray and gamma detection areas but has a wide range of material useful to a wide readership. It covers much of the material on sensors in the course, some of the electronics, and much more besides.

Recommended by the previous lecturer, which sound interesting...

... but which I have not read - these are mostly his comments

The Fundamentals of Physical Constants and the Frontiers of Measurement  by B. W. Petley.   Adam Hilger, Bristol University Press.  Provides some interesting background reading on pushing measurements to extremes in basic physics experiments.  Also some very interesting history on how measurement techniques have developed.

Digital signal processing  by A. Lynn and W. Fuerst.  Revised edition, Wiley.  Extensive coverage of numerical techniques for signal processing in general, FFT etc. (There are many books on this important subject so there is a wide choice of levels and material. I advise to visit the library a few times...)

Web sites

All manufacturers provide data sheets for their products and many of these are accessible by the Web.  Some of them will be provided for you.  I list a few which could be useful

Tektronix   who are primarily an oscilloscope manufacturer. Look under application notes for "Oscilloscopes" where you will find a guide called The XYZ of Oscilloscopes

A couple of important electronics manufacturers who produce op-amps, comparators, discrete components are and where you can find many data sheets and application notes, suggesting proven circuit ideas, are Analog Devices and National Semiconductor. Texas Instruments site is a good place to start for digital components.

Radiospares are a well known supplier of a wide range of components.

Hamamatsu are a supplier of photomultipliers, photodiodes and silicon detectors.

I'll add others as I think of them...

Geoff Hall