The Importance of Outbound Links
Linking to good resources and providing citations helps your readers and thus helps you.
Outbound links are links from your post, blog, or Web site to someone else's content. Outbound links encourage 
surfing to other quality sites based on the link selection practices of the writer responsible for the page with the outbound link. In a sense, outbound links are the most important aspect of a page; they create the Web. They're a service to your readers, and a courtesy to other writers whose sites you've used in your post. Simply put, it's good netiquette to link to your sources, and to related resources for readers who want more information. Finally, good writers provide citations for their sources; on the Web, an outbound link functions as a source citation.
There are some things to keep in mind though:
- The quality of your outbound links reflects on you. Poorly chosen links make you look incompetent, or even stupid.
- Carefully chosen appropriate links encourage readers to return for your commentary or observations, or even for your resource-finding ability.
- In general, unless you have a very good reason, don't have links open a new browser window; that's rude. Let your readers decide how they want links to open.
- If you're part of a blogging network—a collection of blogs created by a single company or organization—do link to quality posts that are part of the network, where it's appropriate.
- If you're linking to a site as a negative example—for instance, a site with truly incredibly unreadable pink on yellow text—use the rel="nofollow" tag. Using the "nofollow" tells the bots that spider sites for search engine listing not to give the site "points" because a good site (yours) linked to it.
Google does notice outbound links. From a technical point of view in terms of search engines and rankings, good quality outgoing links do affect the ranking of the pages that link to them. So, yes, it's a good idea technically to link to good sites, but the bottom line is that linking to good resources and providing citations are good for your readers, and thus good for you.
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Comments
Trying to figure this all out
Right now my site's homepage TheBridalBell does not have any outbound links, and I'm trying to figure out if I should have any. I found one page claiming that they got PR 3 just from having 80 or so links to high quality pages. Have you and experience like this?
You need to think of blogging
You need to think of blogging (and marketing) as a conversation.
Yes, you should have outbound links--not only embedded where the fit in your actual posts, but in your sidebar. Don't go by PR in choosing links--go by the quality of the content/posts.
Find other bloggers in your niche. Read them. Link to them. Comment -- genuine thoughful comments -- on their blogs. Let them know when you've linked to them.
Don't ask for reciprocal links; that's what spammers do.
As the editor in this blog I
As the editor in this blog I strongly second everything said above. I would only add to lisala's excellent comment "Don't ask for reciprocal links; that's what spammers do." that if you have writen a good, quality piece, people will want to link to your post. The otherwise pleasant word "reciprocation" can take on a negative quality in the web/google/link/internet world, but in real life reciprocation is a pretty positive thing. After all, most people appreciate love, friendship, or thoughfulness being reciprocated.
If you cite someone, tell that person that you appreciated thier work, and alert them to this, reciprocation might follow. If not, you are no worse off. If you blatently ask for a link, you really and trully do expose what you are up to and run the risk of looking quite spammy, as lisala mentioned. Keep in mind, that to the average webmaster that pours TLC onto their site, they most likely WILL recognize you as a kindred spirit if you respect their intelligence and do NOT treat the weight of their endorsement as some cheap commodity that can be "traded".
Key to everything said above is motive as well. We all want quality inbound links. There's no use denying that. The difference between a spammer and someone legitimately reaching out to the online community however is quality - do not expect anyone to go out of their way with your site if you are not providing a useful, thoughtful, positive addition to the billions of pages out there.