Hello everyone,

When I began developing our finding aids website last summer, I was a complete newbie to XML databases. I lacked the basic knowledge needed to understand the documentation, or even how to navigate it. Even Paul Swennenhuis's "BaseX for Dummies" (2014) was too advanced for me to follow. "FLWOR?" "Indexes"? I just want to do a keyword search of some files; why is this so hard?!

After extensive Googling, Stack Overflowing, and reading every conversation in this list, I finally got a handle on the basics and completed our website. I've written what I learned in a foundational primer, "BaseX for Newbies," which contains basic definitions of concepts like "client/server architecture" and "modules," XQuery examples using U.S. Library of Congress finding aids, and solutions for problems that tripped me up: https://drive.google.com/file/d/19A5twBhA6OT3YdlcII7fazlwXewUSNkX/view

-Tamara

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