The following books and papers are recommended as references:

[2] - Mathew Austern's introduction to the STL using the concept/model style of presentation. Austern wrote the WWW STL documentation at SGI.
[11] - Bjarne Stroustrup's introduction to C++ and the STL for those who already know some C++. Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++.
[8] - Stanley Lippman and Josee Lajoie's C++ primer.
[9] - Scott Meyers's book on ways to improve your C++ programs. Items 21 and 29 discuss the concept of const-correctness.
[6] - The CGAL design paper.
[7] - The new CGAL kernel design paper.