Of course videos are, I think, easier to learn from. I'm guessing your probobly using 6.0, if you go to help>tutorials, it should open a IE browser and connect to the documentation included with maya. I downloaded ple6.0 just to fiddle with, and the url is like this https://localhost:4447/Maya6.0PLE/en_...openTutorials. Don't copy/paste that, its just what the url should approximately look like. There should be three menus at the side, click those to open up further. These teach you basics, but you have to read them. If your trying to learn maya you should have alot of hours scheduled for learning anyway. Maya is powerful, but all the power in the world is useless if you don't know how to use it.