Have you ever found yourself staring at a blank screen at 10 p.m., with a deadline looming and a mountain of notes scattered across your desktop? We’ve all been there! Wishing upon a shooting start that our research could magically organize itself and whisper the answers straight into our ears. 

But what if your notes could not only talk back but also help you brainstorm, summarize, and even turn dense research into a podcast-worthy conversation? You just got your wish granted, but not by a fairy-godmother. 

✨Meet NotebookLM, your AI-powered friend for note-taking and research!✨

So, what exactly is NotebookLM and why is it so powerful?

At its essence, NotebookLM serves as an intelligent, interactive tool that allows users to upload, examine, and interact with their source materials. In particular, this tool helps with summarizing your long articles, understanding the concept of your references, and even generating a whole new idea coming from your own sources. In short, NotebookLM combines your typical note-taking process and the power of Artificial Intelligence. 

NotebookLM is one of the recent tools released by Google. It is powered by their Gemini 1.5 Pro—an advanced Large Language Model designed to understand and generate human-like text. So then, what’s new? NotebookLM took it up a notch by using Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology.

To help you visualize this, think of it like you are in a giant library. Instead of aimlessly flipping through pages, you get yourself a librarian that scans and pulls exact pages that might hold answers to your questions. These pages are given to your AI friend to process and generate an easy-to-understand answer. As a result, this means reduced chances of hallucinations and factual inaccuracies.

Now that we got an overview of what NotebookLM is, let me guide you on how to use it!

How to Get Started:

Prerequisite:  make sure that you have a Google Account! If you don’t have one yet kindly create one and come back right after! 

1. Access NotebookLM with https://notebooklm.google/ and login using your Google Account credentials.
2. After logging in, you will be welcome with a dashboard that shows your recently created notebooks.
   
3. Let’s try to create another one by clicking the ‘Create New’ button.
   

   

4. A pop-up window for uploading or inserting your sources will appear. Choose your sources from either your local files, the internet, or copied texts.
   
   Fun fact: You can upload up to 50 sources at once (That’s a lot of messy sources to think about if you got no help from NotebookLM).
   
5. After you successfully uploaded your source, a short summary will appear in the chat. Congrats🎉! You now have your very own Notebook!
   

What can you do next?

You can play around with it by 

1. 1. Adding more sources with the ‘Add Button’ or use the ‘Discover Button’ that recommends sources related to your topics. Additionally, you’re also in full control of the sources NotebookLM will use as reference by ticking the checkbox.
      
      Type the topics you are looking for and NotebookLM will recommend sources for you.
   2. Ask NotebookLM specific questions or summarize your sources in chat. Importantly, every answer NotebookLM generates has its reference cited with the number tags [1,2,3,…]. 
      

Bonus Features You’ll Love

1. Generate detailed mind maps that are downloadable. Great for mapping the ideas and categories relationships with each other. Each node could expand or collapse!
   
2. Listen to a podcast-like audio overview of your resources. This is great for when you’re always on-the-go. You can download or share the generated audio to your friends too! The two hosts sound really great with smooth podcast voices.
   
   
3. Add personal notes which are also available to be used as one of your sources.
   
   
4. After editing “Sample Note”, you can include it as your source. Meaning, NotebookLM will consider your personal notes when generating answers. Of course, you’re able to delete or uncheck it too! Total power!
   
   
5. NotebookLM is also your friend when it comes to studying! It can provide you with a study guide document that tests your understanding of your source with a QUIZ but don’t worry it also gives you an answer key.
   
   
6. Similarly, the FAQ document is full of questions and answers. So, you don’t have to think and type the most frequently asked questions.
   
   
7. The Briefing Doc is best when you are preparing for a presentation, or you want a brief and concise explanation of the important details from all your sources.
   
   
8. Lastly, there’s the Timeline where you can get a gist of the evolution of your topic.
   
   

NotebookLM is a fun companion in writing and research due to its many features. However, do exercise caution and cross-check facts, as NotebookLM might still produce occasional inaccuracies. 

Conclusion

Congratulations on creating your very own Notebook. Through this tutorial, you’ve explored the NotebookLM and its fun tools. Now I know that you can think your own way to utilize this amazing tool. Still, here are some cool ways you can make use of it:

• Article writing makes life so much easier when you got more than 1 reference.
• Research: it can help synthesize and find gaps in the literature you have provided.
• Extracting insights from videos and text alike.

With that, have fun and fast-track your academics, professional, or personal works with the help of NotebookLM! 

References:

1. NotebookLM Help
2. What is Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) ? | GeeksforGeeks
3. Unlocking AI’s Potential: How NotebookLM and RAG are Revolutionizing Research | by Travis Felder | Medium