NotebookLM Tutorial: How To Use NotebookLM

Summary

In this engaging NotebookLM tutorial by Tasia Custode, viewers are introduced to the versatile research and note-taking tool developed by Google, designed to handle text, video, and audio in a seamless manner. Tasia guides users through the functionalities of NotebookLM, highlighting its ability to organize and analyze various file types to generate summaries, answer questions, and even create study guides or podcasts. Throughout the tutorial, she emphasizes the importance of managing quality source materials and provides insights on efficiently using the tool to create content, manage projects, and even decipher complex data like medical records. Cautioning users that the tool is still in its experimental phase, she advises saving important information externally.

Highlights

• NotebookLM transforms your notes and research into dynamic guides and podcasts. 🎙
• You can upload up to 50 different sources, including videos and documents, for in-depth synthesis. 📦
• The interactive audio features simulate a conversation, making learning engaging and fun. 🎧
• Create FAQ and briefing documents with ease, perfect for onboarding or informational purposes. 🗂
• Garbage in, garbage out: The effectiveness of NotebookLM depends on the quality of source materials. 🗑️

Key Takeaways

• NotebookLM is a powerful tool from Google for organizing and analyzing diverse file types to gain insights. 📚
• It's capable of generating study guides, podcasts, and summaries, acting like a virtual research assistant. 🤖
• The platform is in its experimental phase, so don't rely on it permanently for storing important documents. 🛑
• NotebookLM can convert lectures, documents, and videos into useful formats like study guides or briefings. 🎓
• The tool encourages collaboration by making information accessible and manageable across various formats. 🤝

Overview

Tasia Custode's tutorial on NotebookLM walks viewers through a comprehensive exploration of this Google application, designed to be the ultimate research companion. The tool aids in threading together information from PDFs, Google Docs, videos, and other varied sources, allowing users to create cohesive narratives and summaries. Seamlessly integrating data, it fosters a collaborative research environment.

Viewers are shown how NotebookLM can be used to easily upload and organize up to 50 different sources. Whether it's for educational purposes or business projects, the application can transform complex data sets into podcasts or study guides, simplifying the assimilation of information. The interactive features, including the chat and studio panels, enhance user experience by allowing easy editing and content creation.

Despite its current experimental status, NotebookLM holds promising potential for researchers and students alike. Tasia highlights its utility in creating detailed content pieces like timelines, FAQs, and study guides, but reminds users to back up important data, as the tool's permanence is uncertain. Overall, NotebookLM is highlighted as a transformative tool in managing and understanding diverse datasets.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to NotebookLM The Introduction to NotebookLM chapter explains the tool's utility in streamlining the process of creating cohesive summaries from diverse sources of information, including text, video, and audio. The chapter aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of what NotebookLM is, how to effectively use it, and highlights beneficial use cases while also pointing out potential considerations to be mindful of when using the tool.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Setting Up NotebookLM NotebookLM is a free research and note-taking tool provided by Google, designed to help organize, analyze, and derive insights from various types of files, including PDFs, Google Docs, slides, websites, text, and videos.
• 02:30 - 04:30: Uploading and Organizing Content This chapter introduces readers to the concept of using Notebook LM, an online tool that can transform diverse content such as study materials or briefing notes into different formats, like podcasts. The chapter starts by explaining how to access Notebook LM via a provided link to 'notebooklm.google.com'. The focus is on uploading and organizing content within the platform for efficient use.
• 04:30 - 06:30: Using the Chat and Source Features The chapter begins by instructing users to ensure they are signed into their Google account to access and save their Notebook ALM projects. New users will encounter a privacy pop-up and a prompt to create their first notebook, which can be initiated by clicking 'Create'. The author views individual notebooks as specific projects, setting the stage for organized project management.
• 06:30 - 09:30: Generating Audio Overviews and Podcasts The chapter discusses methods for generating audio overviews and podcasts. It suggests creating a digital notebook for specific projects to keep organized. Users can add relevant documents and sources into this notebook, choosing from up to 50 different sources. Examples include linking to Google Drive or pasting in text. The chapter also provides guidance on how to upload and add videos, using YouTube as an example.
• 09:30 - 12:00: Creating Study Guides and Briefing Docs The chapter titled 'Creating Study Guides and Briefing Docs' focuses on how to upload various sources into a notebook for efficient information gathering. It describes the process of uploading a YouTube link, a Google Doc, and adding a web link. These sources are related to optimizing and freeing up space in Gmail and Google Workspace. The emphasis is on effectively collecting and organizing information from different types of media.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Exploring Other Features like Timelines and FAQs The chapter discusses features like timelines and FAQs in Notebook LM. It starts with the importance of naming notebooks appropriately, which can be renamed anytime by clicking on the current name in the top left corner. After uploading all sources, three main sections or panels will be visible, with the sources being on the left-hand panel.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Use Cases and Final Thoughts The chapter, titled 'Use Cases and Final Thoughts,' appears to discuss various features of a certain software tool or application. It mentions a central chat panel and a studio section on the right side, where users can engage with audio-related features, including generating podcasts and adding notes. There's also a mention of a sources panel on the left side, which allows users to add additional sources at any time. The chapter seems to plan to explore these features in more detail later.

NotebookLM Tutorial: How To Use NotebookLM Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Working across text, video, and audio can get a little scourly. If you're looking for somewhere to make sense of all those sources of information and create cohesive summaries, then you're going to want to learn about NotebookLM. Today is your complete NotebookLM tutorial. I'm going to explain what NotebookLM is, how to use NotebookLM, and I'm going to share some helpful use cases and things you're going to want to look out for.
• 00:30 - 01:00 NotebookLM is a free research and note-taking tool from our friends at Google. It helps you organize, analyze, and gain insights from all kinds of different files like PDFs, Google Docs, slides, website URLs, copy text, video, and more. It can analyze sources, answer questions, and generate summaries and outlines. And of course, it's all a very collaborative experience. Think of Notebook LM as a virtual research assistant, capable of answering questions or tracking down references, all based solely on the source
• 01:00 - 01:30 material that you've provided. And as if that wasn't cool enough, it can even transform all of these different files into study guides, briefings, or yes, even podcasts. And I'm going I'm not going to get into all of that in the podcast generation in a little bit because it's just too cool. But that's just one use case of Notebook LM. So first, let's start with how to use Notebook LM. Head to notebooklm. Google. Com, and I've included a link in the description as well for you.
• 01:30 - 02:00 And just make sure that you are signed into your Google account in the top right. This way, everything or all of your notebooks will be saved and accessible for you. So I'm showing you a test account of mine right now since if you've never accessed Notebook ALM before, you're going to have a privacy pop-up here, and then a prompt to create your first notebook. Here, you'll simply click on Create to get started. Now, I like to think of individual notebooks as specific projects,
• 02:00 - 02:30 and then that works really well for me to keep things organized. Here, you can create a notebook for a specific project you're working on and add the relevant documents and sources. And you're going to be given some examples like Google Drive, link, even pasting in text. And you can choose up to 50 different sources for a notebook. So for this example, maybe I'm going to upload a YouTube video of mine. And keep in mind, as of right now, this is how you upload and add videos,
• 02:30 - 03:00 it's via a YouTube link rather than an MP4. I'm going to click here to upload another source, and this time I'm going to upload a Google Doc of mine. And I'm not quite done yet. I actually want to add another source. So I'm going to click up here again and add a web link for even more information into this notebook. All of these sources I've uploaded have to do with freeing up Gmail space and freeing up Google Workspace space.
• 03:00 - 03:30 With my sources added, you can see Notebook LM has gone and named this particular notebook something it thinks is relevant. I actually like this name, but you can click to rename a notebook at any time if you wish. If it still says Untitled for some reason, you would just click on that near the top left to change the name. Always make sure you're naming your notebook something that makes sense for you. So once you've uploaded all of the sources, you're going to have three main sections or panels here. You're You're going to see your sources on the left-hand panel.
• 03:30 - 04:00 And then in this center panel, you've got your chat, which we're going to get into some of these features in a minute. And then here on the right-hand side, you've got studio. So here's going to be some of the audio overview stuff, which basically it can generate a quick little podcast for you. And then there's some notes where you can add notes as well. And we're going to get into this and these features here shortly. First, drawing your attention back to this sources panel on the left. This is where at any time you can add additional sources or you can
• 04:00 - 04:30 toggle on or off certain sources. So keep this in mind as we move into this chat panel here when we start prompting in our notebook. Maybe we're asking to follow up questions or something like, How does Gmail search function aid inbox management? With all the sources toggled on, it's pulling from all of these sources. Focusing again on this chat panel in the middle, you can see right at the top, it's already pulled a perfect little
• 04:30 - 05:00 summary for me about what the three sources are about. So basically, what this little notebook or project is about right now. It's talking about the YouTube video I've uploaded and accompanying text, how many tips it's offering for what, what the tips are. And it's even pulled me, Tasia Custody, the host of the YouTube video, and then other things and resources that the video mentioned. It's a pretty great summary that happened in a matter of seconds. And you'll notice right under the summary, we have a couple of other options.
• 05:00 - 05:30 We can save this to a note, so that would save this summary as a note on the right-hand side. You could copy it. So this is literally just copies the summary, and then you could just paste it wherever you want. You can add a note Out, which we're going to do in a little bit. We've got our audio overview option, and you've got the option here to create a briefing doc. Now, before we get into any of these, let's actually start by typing down at the bottom here a prompt so we can interact with our notebook.
• 05:30 - 06:00 You can pick from some of these preset follow-up questions if you'd like, or you can ask anything as specific or nonspecific as you'd like, and it's going to pull from all of your sources. For this example, I actually like this third question here, which methods efficiently delete unwanted Gmail content. And this can just drill right down to the point for me. If I couldn't scan all of these documents myself, I didn't want to spend maybe 10 minutes watching the video, I'm going to click on this. And just like that, it's given me every single tip here all organized.
• 06:00 - 06:30 Prompting Notebook LM feels just like you're used to when it comes to prompting any of the LLMs you might be using, whether it be Gemini or ChatGPT, Poplexity, or whatever it is that you're used to. It feels very similar here. Now, something else you may be used to is that you can copy out any of these responses. You can also give feedback via a good response, a thumbs up, or a bad response option, the thumbs down. And up at the top, you can refresh any response if you
• 06:30 - 07:00 don't love what it's given you. But another great feature of Notebook LM is the ability to quickly view where it's sourcing that info from from within your source materials. So you can hover over the sources to get a quick snapshot. But if you click on a source number, it's going to open up that source guide in our left panel and show you exactly where in the source material it pulled that information from. But remember, garbage in, garbage out. You control the source information here.
• 07:00 - 07:30 So if you're feeding it junk URLs or unfounded conspiracy videos that you found on YouTube, that's what you're putting into your notebook, that's what it's pulling from then. Garbage in, garbage out. But you're also going to notice with the source guide that each individual source we've uploaded has its own AI-generated summary. We're drilling down even further here now. So we can see that with this Gmail tips, Clean up your Inbox script that I uploaded from my Google Docs, if we click on that down arrow
• 07:30 - 08:00 in the source guide, we're given that specific summary of this exact source. Let's see what this looks like for another individual source that we did. We'll click on Close, Source, View, arrows to get back to our regular sources layout. Here, let's click on this first source, which is the URL I added. Just like that, it's created a source guide for this specific source and auto-generated a summary of this source for us.
• 08:00 - 08:30 Let's drill down even further now using a key topic from this source guide. We'll click on Gmail Storage, and this prompts Notebook LM to expand on that topic a little bit based on all our sources in our source panel. It's pretty neat. Now let's learn how to make a podcast from our source information in Notebook LM. This is really helpful because these are conversational audio summaries of the key topics from our sources. Back in our notebook here, on the right, we've got our studio panel and at the top,
• 08:30 - 09:00 we see our audio overview. And check this out. We've got this deep dive conversation option where we can see it's going to be two hosts. For now, it's in English only. And we do have some customized options that I'm not going to go over right now in this video. So for this, let's just simply hit Generate to have Notebook LM generate a conversational podcast, an audio file, if you will, for you for all of the key topics from your sources. So we click on Generate, and this can take a few minutes depending
• 09:00 - 09:30 on how many sources you've uploaded to your notebook and how long or big those sources might be. But know that this is going to be a completely AI-generated conversation between two AI-generated hosts. So this took about three minutes for me, and it's generated a nearly 18-minute long audio interview. Let's play a clip from this audio overview. All right, let's dive in. Today, we're tackling Google Workspace storage, specifically How to get rid
• 09:30 - 10:00 of that annoying storageful notification. Yeah, that dreaded message. To guide us, we've got two sources. First up, the official guide from the Google Workspace Learning Center, and then a YouTube video called Gmail tips, Clean up your inbox in 2025. Nice. It's pretty crazy, right? We've got the same thumbs up, thumbs down option to rate our audio overviews. You can click the three-dot menu option to change the playback speed so you can listen quicker if you want. You can download the file from here, or you could delete it if
• 10:00 - 10:30 you don't like it at all. You can also click to share the audio overview, which means you're giving anyone with the link access to the overview. If you have this interactive mode, which, as you can see is still in beta, you can click that to join in on the conversation. You would give microphone access here, and then you can play and pause the audio overview to add in your own two sense or ask a question. And this is supposed to be dynamic, meaning it should change the discussion
• 10:30 - 11:00 of the podcast, maybe send it in a different direction depending on the question you've asked or statement you've interjected with. It's supposed to be like a live show, if you will, but keep in mind this is still in beta. So now let's create a study guide. If you're a student and you know you're going to be tested on, say, all this source material, what a fun way and different way to study and prep for your exam. There are a couple of ways to create a study guide, but I'm going to show you
• 11:00 - 11:30 from under the notes section of our right-hand panel. Simply click on Study Guide. Now, this may take a few seconds, but you're going to see it's generating a new note for you here within your notebook. And just like that, it has created a study guide that we can click to open. Here we've got our quiz instructions. There's an answer key, essay questions. There's even a glossary of terms. Check this out. You can even convert this study guide to a source if you wanted.
• 11:30 - 12:00 How neat is this? So think about this. If you're a student and you've recorded a lecture, you could then upload that MP3 file of that lecture as source material in your notebook, and then you could use that to help you create a custom study guide. Talk about exam prep. Wowza. In the same studio panel, you can click to add a new note to your notebook at any time as well. Now, here you would simply add anything you want that's relevant to your
• 12:00 - 12:30 notebook or your project. I'm going to delete this just for this example because I want to show you how you can also create a briefing doc. So maybe you're onboarding somebody at work, you've incorporated training documents and PDF files and maybe an HR video or what have you, you can quickly, with the click of a button, create a briefing doc. And you can click into this briefing doc here once it's generated. And here we go. Ours that it's created for us is based on the key themes and ideas from our sources.
• 12:30 - 13:00 It's pretty great. In this same section, you can also create a timeline within Notebook LM. Now, this doesn't really pertain exactly to my particular example that I have here of cleaning up your inbox. But if you had a ton of source files, maybe historical documents or something, and you're working on project workflows, this could really be useful for you. I'm going to click into this here. I It doesn't really fit this particular example, but you get the idea
• 13:00 - 13:30 of how you could then use it. And lastly, you can create an FAQ doc. This is super helpful, too. In that same source panel under Notes, you're going to click on FAQ. In a matter of seconds, it has generated an FAQ for me based on my sources. So check this out. It has literally generated a frequently asked questions doc in no time at all. How great is this FAQ option if you're putting together a web page of all your
• 13:30 - 14:00 frequently asked questions for your service or product? Love. A couple of clicks in a matter of seconds, and it's done. Now, another couple quick notes for you. In your notes section, you can click the three-dot menu icon to quickly convert all notes to a source. You can also collapse or expand your left or right panels at any time using the Collapse Panel button. So collapsing them can give you a much bigger chat screen if you prefer that view.
• 14:00 - 14:30 At any time, you can move out of a notebook and back to your dashboard by clicking on the Notebook LM logo in the top left. This is going to bring you back to where you can see all of your notebooks that you've created. You can create a new one from here. You can click to delete a notebook or quickly edit the title. You can see the creation date and how many sources for your notebook, and you can see sharing permissions as well. Now, in the top right is your settings gear where you can send feedback if you encounter any hiccups, You can also change to dark mode here if
• 14:30 - 15:00 you prefer, as it may be easier on your eyes. Now, when it comes to use cases, there are a ton. Besides the ones we've just covered, like creating a briefing doc or a study guide or FAQ for your website, I've got friends that are quite literally using Notebook LM to create content. Quick podcast with a couple of clicks. They need content, and Notebook LM does all the heavy lifting for them. You could use Notebook LM to decipher medical records for you.
• 15:00 - 15:30 Think of how daunting it can be trying to understand all the medical jargon, and maybe you've got different doctors in different places for different things. Now you can upload everything into one central spot and build a solid notebook of your complete medical history and drill down into any questions or concerns you might have. Notebook LM could help you with your sales job or making sense of analytics. What are some other use cases that you can think of? How are you using Notebook LM? How would you use Notebook LM? Let everyone I know in the comments below.
• 15:30 - 16:00 I'm really curious to see how everybody's using this. And before I leave you, we've got to go over some very important information. Notebook LM is still in its experimental phase, as we know Google likes to do. Meaning we don't know if this is going to remain a standalone product or be integrated into something like Gemini or be scrapped altogether. So do not just simply rely on leaving all of your documents in there and thinking they're safe and saved forever. You never You should be, at the very least,
• 16:00 - 16:30 downloading any information you want from here, saving it on a different drive maybe, maybe copying out any good summary that it's giving you. Make sure you're creating some type of backup for this content. Remember what I said before, Garbage In, garbage out. You're in control of the source information, so use it wisely. That's your Notebook LM tutorial. Now I want to hear from you. How are you using Notebook LM? Let everyone know in the comments below. As always, thank you so much for watching.
• 16:30 - 17:00 If you like this video, well, I want to know. So give it a like, a share, or you can leave that comment below. You can click right about here to subscribe to my channel and here and here for more content just like this. Thanks for watching. See you next time.