"the electronic components we generally use to build small to medium sized circuits."

The same components are used whatever the size of circuit - just in smaller or larger quantities!

There was a discussion about capacitors only about a week ago:
http://www.8052.com/forum/read.phtml?id=31852&top=32050

It'd probably be worth browsing around a few component manufacturer's websites and looking in their Tech Support sections.
I cited one very useful example at the end of the abvementioned thread.

General catalogues often have useful guides.

Hobbyist electronics magazines?