Many useful pointers to information about Soar can be found in the Soar Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. This is the primary starting point for those new to the Soar approach.

An excellent introduction to the public-domain Soar software is given in The Soar Coloring Book. It is a gentle introduction to programming in Soar and touches upon the highlights of the system.

The book Unified Theories of Cognition by Allen Newell (Harvard Press) lays the foundation for Soar as a unifying approach to psychological theory. It also shows why an intelligent agent approach is superior to a simple rule-based systems approach — its more comprehensive and integrates many tasks into a common framework.

The book The Soar Papers: Readings on Integrated Intelligence edited by Rosenbloom, Laird, and Newell (MIT Press) is a two-volume set including some of the most important research papers published by the Soar community.

Many of the Soar technical papers are archived at The Soar Archives. Most of the information is open to the public.