I'm sure this is an incredibly popular link, but I didn't see it here and I thought since it helped me so much it might help others in a similar situation. It's Sheldon Brown's page for beginners on cycling, and has all sorts of wonderful tidbits of information aimed directly at silly newbies like myself. While it's not all specifically for Touring, I found it incredibly enlightening. I suppose this is much a case of "blind leading the blind", but nonetheless:
http://sheldonbrown.com/beginners/index.html