diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 5b56cc4..d5c8a16 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -1,6 +1,29 @@
 # README
 
-test webhook trigger 6
+## Introduction
+
+BookWorm is a full stack application allowing users to query bibliometric data, sourced from [OpenAlex's data snapshot](https://docs.openalex.org/download-all-data/openalex-snapshot), and provides the option of viewing the resulting data in a graph-based data visualization. 
+
+On opening, users are presented with a blank canvas.
+
+![Image of a blank canvas on a webpage with a green bar at the top. There is a button in the left that says "Open Query Panel" and a button on the right that says "Render Visualization?" In the center is an emoji of a caterpillar and a book and it says "BookWorm"](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/a2317195-2488-476b-b22a-fa71afb685ca)
+
+In the top left corner is a button to open the "Query Panel", which utilizes GraphiQL to provide an embedded GraphQL interface for creating queries, as well as documentation for the structure of the graph. 
+
+![Image of the query panel open, and an example GraphQL query.](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/1296afea-f551-42c1-81dc-923e5184929e)
+
+If the query is valid and successful, the API will return a JSON object that mirrors the structure of the request.
+
+![Image of the resulting JSON response from the query](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/095f4462-41c4-45ac-ba70-f4bb3d864038)
+
+On closing the query panel, users can view and interact with the generated graph visualization. 
+
+![Image of a graph visualization of the data, showing a yellow work in the center with teal lines going out and connecting to nodes representing authors](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/6e2c118b-ec4f-4e9c-a4e2-aeaa4fddcae5)
+
+![Another image of a query result, showing many blue or yellow nodes with article titles, connected by pink lines between them.](https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/63a52e59-0ae6-4f88-9010-0a8d5033be9e)
+
+
+This uses a [GraphQL API](https://graphql.org/learn/queries/) for the query structure. 
 
 ## Production Setup
 
@@ -16,7 +39,7 @@ Quickstart:
 
 ## Development Setup
 
-The recommended development setup is to run the rails development server and the react npm development server independently.
+To run a local development setup, you can run the rails development server and the react npm development server independently.
 
 Requires a working installation of Postgres, npm, and bundler, and Ruby 3.2.2.
 - If you do not have a ruby version manager, I recommend `rbenv`. 
@@ -44,7 +67,7 @@ In the `/react` folder:
 
 ### Automated Tests
 
-This repository uses RSpec for testing the rails application. 
+This repository uses RSpec for testing the rails application. (These need to be reworked as they haven't been maintained in recent changes). 
 
 In the `/rails` folder:
 - Run `rspec` to run all of the rspec tests, or `rspec spec/path/to/*_spec.rb` to run a specific test. 
@@ -54,3 +77,13 @@ Coverage reports are generated using [simplecov](https://github.com/simplecov-ru
 The test suite is configured to use [vcr](https://github.com/vcr/vcr) for tests that interact with any external APIs, primarily the OpenAlex API. If you encounter errors related to `vcr` while running tests, try deleting the recorded 'cassette' files in `spec/fixtures/vcr_cassettes/` and running `rspec` again to re-record them. 
 
 Planning on trying Jest for testing front end. WIP. 
+
+## Data Source
+
+Data is sourced from [OpenAlex's data snapshot](https://docs.openalex.org/download-all-data/openalex-snapshot), which also provides information about the structure of the source data and some basic instructions for uploading to a relational database, such as the Postgres database used in BookWorm. 
+
+There are rake tasks in `/rails/lib/tasks/` for reading from CSV files to the database - this process could be optimized by running rake tasks in parallel or making adjustments to the insertion batch sizes in each file. 
+
+## Data Visualization
+
+The data visualization is generated using a combination of [React Flow](https://reactflow.dev/) for rendering nodes and edges, and [D3](https://d3js.org/) for calculating node positions.