NotebookLM for organizing information
What is NotebookLM?
NotebookLM is a research and note-taking tool from Google that uses AI to help you understand and organize information from multiple sources. You upload documents, and NotebookLM reads them, answers questions about them, finds connections, and helps you synthesize insights.
Think of it as a personal research assistant that becomes an expert on your specific documents and notes.
What does NotebookLM do?
Analyzes your sources: Upload PDFs, Google Docs, text files, URLs, or paste in notes. NotebookLM reads everything and understands the content.
Answers questions about your sources: Ask questions about your uploaded materials and NotebookLM provides answers with citations showing exactly which source and section the information came from.
AI prompt: "What are the main findings from these three research papers?"
NotebookLM will synthesize the findings and cite specific passages from each paper.
Generates summaries: Get overviews of long documents, comparisons across multiple sources, or thematic summaries.
Creates study guides: NotebookLM can generate FAQs, key concepts, timelines, or outlines based on your sources.
Finds connections: NotebookLM identifies themes, contradictions, or patterns across multiple documents that you might miss when reading manually.
Stays grounded in your sources: Unlike general chatbots, NotebookLM only uses the information you've provided. It won't make up facts or pull from the broader internet.
How NotebookLM is different from chatbots
NotebookLM is designed for working with your own documents. It stays strictly within the information you've uploaded and always cites sources.
Chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude draw on their training data (everything they learned during training) and may add information beyond what you provided.
Use NotebookLM when: You need to analyze, organize, or understand specific documents you've collected.
Use a chatbot when: You need general knowledge, creative writing, or brainstorming beyond your existing sources.
Getting started with NotebookLM
- Visit NotebookLM and sign in with a Google account
- Create a new notebook
- Add sources by uploading documents, pasting URLs, or copying in text
- Ask questions, request summaries, or generate study materials
- Use the citations to verify and explore the original sources
NotebookLM is free to use with a Google account.
Best uses for NotebookLM
Research projects: Organize research papers, articles, and notes. Ask NotebookLM to synthesize findings, identify gaps, or compare methodologies.
Studying and learning: Upload course readings, lecture notes, or textbook chapters. Ask NotebookLM to create study guides, explain concepts, or generate practice questions.
Meeting and interview notes: Upload transcripts from meetings or interviews. Ask NotebookLM to identify themes, extract action items, or compare responses across multiple sessions.
Book notes and summaries: Upload excerpts or notes from books you're reading. Ask NotebookLM to help you connect ideas or create outlines for essays or projects.
Legal or policy documents: Analyze contracts, policies, or regulations. Ask NotebookLM to explain key terms, identify obligations, or compare multiple documents.
Tips for using NotebookLM effectively
Upload clean, well-formatted sources: The better the quality of your source documents, the more accurate NotebookLM's analysis will be.
Ask specific questions: Instead of "summarize this," try "what are the main arguments in favor of policy X across these three documents?"
Use citations: Always check the citations NotebookLM provides. This helps you verify accuracy and understand context.
Combine related sources: NotebookLM is most powerful when analyzing multiple documents together. Upload everything related to a topic in one notebook.
Request different output formats: Ask NotebookLM to create FAQs, timelines, outlines, or comparisons depending on what you need.
AI prompt: "Create a timeline of events mentioned across these meeting notes, organized chronologically"
Limitations to keep in mind
Only works with uploaded sources: NotebookLM doesn't search the web or add external information. It only knows what you've given it.
Document upload limits: There are limits on how many sources and how much text you can upload to a single notebook. Check Google's current limits.
Not perfect at understanding: Like all AI tools, NotebookLM can misinterpret nuance or miss context. Always review its answers critically.
Privacy: Your uploaded documents are processed by Google. Avoid uploading highly sensitive or confidential information unless you've reviewed Google's privacy policies and determined it's appropriate.
How NotebookLM fits into your workflow
NotebookLM works well alongside other tools:
Perplexity or Google for research → NotebookLM for analysis: Use Perplexity or Google to find sources, then upload them to NotebookLM to synthesize and organize.
NotebookLM for understanding → Chatbot for writing: Use NotebookLM to analyze your sources, then paste the insights into ChatGPT or Claude to help draft reports, essays, or summaries.
Transcription tool → NotebookLM for analysis: Use Otter.ai or another transcription tool to create text from meetings, then upload transcripts to NotebookLM for thematic analysis.
Privacy considerations
Data processing: Google processes your uploaded documents to power NotebookLM. This means your documents are sent to Google's servers.
Avoid sensitive content: Don't upload confidential business documents, personal medical records, legal contracts with privilege, or anything you wouldn't want Google to process.
Control your data: You can delete notebooks and sources at any time, which removes them from NotebookLM.
Related resources
Need to transcribe meetings or calls first? See Otter.ai and other transcription tools. Want to gather sources for your notebook? Check out Perplexity AI for research. Looking for general AI help? See Which chatbot should I use?.