I have been a Nortel Meridian tech for the past 10 years and just starting my transition to data and VOIP. I just passed my cert tests for CCNA and plan to eventually get my CCVP. I see that CVoice 6.0 is required for CCVP and now gives you CCNA Voice cert for passing it so I will be starting there.

I took 4 community college courses for CCNA that were through the Cisco Net Academy to ensure I understood the material, but the college does not offer any other Cisco classes at this time so I will be learnning on my own.

I have never done any VOIP at all and wondering where I should start. What are the better books and study material to begin with?

Welcome to the club.  I've been struggling with the CVoice for a few months now.  I picked up a copy of Kevin Wallace's Cisco Voice over IP third edition.  Pretty good, some mistakes, so go get the errata from Ciscopress.com.

I also got a safari online trial account and read through most of the Quick Reference sheets.  I would say these are must.  Don't know about anyone else, but I found some answers to questions in the Quick Reference sheets, that I couldn't find anywhere else.

I previously posted some links I found that helped.
http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1552033&page=1

Don't forget the Cisco Learning Network as well.

I'm new to the telecom world altogether, so it's all quite a shock to me, but pretty cool stuff.

Good luck.