As for many of our 'recognised' long distance walks, we followed the route using the Arum Guide.
With extracts from 1:25000 Ordnance Survey maps sitting alongside the route description 
thay have always served us well.
Of course, having originally planned to walk the Dales Way in 2001, the Guide we bought back then was somewhat out of date, and on occasion did not accurately describe the route.
 Although much of the route had remained unchanged, we did find that the instructions given were often less-than-helpful, even mis-leading in places.

This is by far-and-away the worst Arum Guide we have used. Of course I suppose that, were I not descended from a long line of Yorkshire folk, I might have bought a more recent guide ....

We had originally planned to walk the Dales Way several years ago and in the interim accumulated a number of books and guides.
So, we also had a copy (2003 version, although at least this was newly-revised) of Dales Way by Paul Hannon.
This is a more compact book with no maps to speak of.   A sketch at the beginning of each section is provided, but the route is described by way of text and is accompanied by numerous sketches of points of interest.

Although we perservered with Anthony Burton's guide, we did find ourselves referring to this book quite often to confirm the route.

Over the years we had also aquired the Dales Way route map by Harvey.
This is an excellent map of the whole route at a scale of 1:40000.  The innovative use of space is a joy in itself ...
In truth, although we always carried the map with us, we never used it out-in-the-field.  

It was very useful when planning the walk - for instance to judge the distance between overnight stops - and we did tend use it each evening to have a look at the following day's walk, but during the day it remained tucked away in a rucksack.