You should remember that the reference list at the end of your assignment is actually a reflection of the research you have used throughout your assignment.
That may seem unnervingly simple, but it can help to keep those last couple of pages in mind before you start researching.
Your reference list should be a flag to your lecturer/marker to show them at a glance how much research you've done - and how widely you've researched.
At an undergrad level, you should try to have at least eight works in the reference list of any assignment (the bigger the assignment, the more works), and they should come from a variety of sources - journals, books, webpages... The wider the range, the better.
The largest percentage of your reference list should be taken up by recent journal articles (recent = about the last five years or so). The next largest percentage should be taken up by recent books (published less than ten years ago, preferably also within the last five years). The rest should be a mix of reliable, web pages and some older journals and books.
The people marking you are largely obsessed with recent work. Try to avoid having more than a couple of texts that are more than ten years old. However, including one or two can show that you have researched the back ground of your topic, and you have a better understanding of the overall context in which your topic sits.
In the next "chapter" of this section I'll give you some helpful memes to keep in mind when trying to build a "killer" reference list.
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