Getting Started with Google’s NotebookLM | RAG Ai
Google’s NotebookLM is more than just a storytelling tool — it’s a powerful, AI-driven research and note-taking assistant designed to help you organize, summarize, and interact with information in a way that boosts productivity and understanding. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of NotebookLM, demonstrate its key features, and show you how to get the most out of the tool with actionable steps. Be sure to follow along with your screenshots as we break down each step!
What really is NotebookLM? 🤔
NotebookLM is an AI-powered assistant that leverages the innovative Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) concept to combine the best of information retrieval and generative AI. This means it can pull relevant data from your provided sources — whether that’s a website, PDF, or even a YouTube video — and generate accurate summaries, FAQs, study guides, and more.
Why RAG Matters:
• Accuracy: RAG ensures that the AI’s outputs are grounded in your actual documents.
- Relevance: The AI pulls in the most pertinent details, making your research more efficient.
You could read more about RAG Ai on my previous post.
Getting Started: Setting Up Your Notebook
- Access NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google.com/
- Create a New Notebook: Click the “Create new” button.
you might get a dialogue prompt to add sources to your notebook, but I’ll close that for now and revisit.
3. Give your notebook a title
Adding Source(s) to your Notebook
Now let’s add one (1) source, an article.
At the time of writing this article, the free version of Notebook LM permits adding up to 50 sources.
4. Click on “Add source”
A modal dialog will appear, then click on Website, to add the article link, or click YouTube, to add a youtube video link etc.
You could click in any order
5. Click on Website, then paste the article URL, and click Insert
Follow same process to add the Youtube link
You’ll see that it would add the website under Sources, and then create a chat session, with a summary of what’s in the article, and then give you Notes options.
From this source, we could generate a Study guide, Briefing doc, FAQ, or “Timeline”. We could also generate a Podcast.
Generating notes on your Notebook
Let’s generate a summary of our source
6. Click on Briefing doc
It would display New note Generating…
Once it’s done generating, it will then display a note title and its content
I think it’s a bug, but I’m unsure why Google added a date of October 26 2023 to the content summarization. You could edit that off by the way 🙂
You could play around all of its feature, If you click on FAQ, it will automatically generate some sets of FAQs for you.
You could also prompt the Ai Agent chatbot, to get results. For example:
Generating an interactive podcast on your Notebook
You could click Generate to autonomously generate the podcast, or Customize to prompt the tool on what you need on the podcast
When you click on Generate, it displays a progress menu — This might take some minutes to complete
When the podcast is ready, you’ll see it on the same window.
Conclusion
Google’s NotebookLM is a versatile tool designed to enhance your research and productivity through intelligent AI assistance. By combining the power of Retrieval-Augmented Generation with user-friendly features like multi-source integration, interactive chat, briefing docs, and even AI-powered podcasts, NotebookLM becomes an essential asset for students, professionals, and researchers alike. Whether you’re using the free version or exploring the advanced capabilities of NotebookLM Plus, this tool can transform the way you handle information — making research not only more efficient but also more engaging.
Now that you’re ready to get started, follow along, and let NotebookLM guide you through a smarter, more interactive way to manage your research.
