Keep a Quotes File as a Google Doc
Using a separate Google Doc to store important quotes can be one way to keep your notebook sources more focused on your topic or theme. This is especially useful if the quote comes from a text that is largely unrelated to your theme. If you know that you will be referencing a lot of different texts, you can also use this strategy to bypass the 50 source cap.
Why use a Google Doc?
A static PDF or text document is only read into the notebook the first time it is added, but a Google Doc is read in fresh from the cloud every time the notebook is launched.
How to Format a Quote
The ideal formatting for a quote collection includes information about the author and title of the book (and other relevant metadata, like page number) in every paragraph in the file.
For example:
“At the very instant of its modern revival, philosophical atomism (which became known as “mechanical philosophy”) seized on the figure of the automaton as a symbol of its emerging conception of corporeality and of the very constitution of matter. And it was precisely at this moment, when the discourses of materiality (that is, physics) and mechanical simulacra became explicitly intertwined, that materialism and its symbolic counterparts, the toy and the machine, both became associated with realism” (Daniel Tiffany, Toy Medium: Materialism and the Modern Lyric, pg. 45)
Benefits
Once you have a collection of quotations formatted this way, you can import them as a source. This will allow you to not only ask NotebookLM factual questions about them (eg. “Which author discussed the connection between toy and machine?”), but also broader questions like: “Who are the main authors who discuss materialism?” or “What was the name of the book about ancient Chinese automata?”
Chat responses come with inline citations that allow you to jump directly to the underlying passages you originally provided the model. If you ensure that each quote includes its full bibliographic information, you can also ask NotebookLM to generate a bibliography for the works cited in the previous response as a follow-up question.
Add Your Own Notes
You can add your own notes alongside AI-generated outputs in NotebookLM. These notes will be included in the possible sources for future outputs and responses.
Benefits
Since NotebookLM only operates on the sources you have stored within it, adding notes can help the notebook avoid errors and misunderstandings. You can use these notes to:
- include your own critical analysis and insight
- provide additional context not present in the text
- clarify confusing phrasing or details
- flag when a claim or source is inaccurate, outdated, or biased
- highlight an important connection or theme
Adding notes also helps ensure that your own critical thinking and insights as a researcher are being reflected in NotebookLM’s generated responses.
Experiment with Different Outputs
Sometimes it’s helpful to encounter your research and the primary texts in different ways than you normally do. You can ask NotebookLM to generate a mindmap to show how different ideas or sources are connected. You can generate an audio overview that offers you a short podcast-like conversation about your topic between two speakers. You can ask for flashcards or summaries of key themes. As you do so, you can check and correct for accuracy and bias, identify new directions or questions to research, or envision the project in a new way.