well, most of the things are describes by aboyliketim very well....its really amazing how such long dna is packaged into the cell..for a human cell, its almost a metre long, and with several folds of packaging its very well places into a aprox 10micrometre cell size..
while learning this , its interesting to imagine what happens when DNA replication has to occur and the enzymes have to really open up the DNA...
one of the best books that describes as well as provides animations is Molecular Biology of the Gene by Watson and others (i think 8th edition), If you come accross this book in the library, then worth to read it