The Sources section¶

The Sources column, on the left side of the screen, contains and organizes all information sources imported into the notebook. Each source is represented by a clickable element that, when selected, shows additional details and options.

A fundamental function is the ability to select or deselect specific sources before asking questions or generating analyses. This allows you to focus the AI's attention on a specific subset of documents, particularly useful when working with many sources or wanting to compare different perspectives on the same topic.

Adding sources¶

At the top you'll find the "+ Add sources" button which opens a popup with import options:

Supported file types are:

• Audio files: for example MP3 and WAV
• Copied and pasted text
• Google Docs
• Google Slides: up to 100 slides
• Google Sheets: currently limited to 100,000 tokens
• Images: tiff, heic, jpeg, avif, bmp, GIF, ico, jp2, png, WebP
• Microsoft Word files, text files, Markdown, and PDF
• Web URLs
• Public YouTube video URLs

Google Docs: once imported, these documents don't automatically update if you modify the original version on Drive. Any significant change will require a new import.

Multimedia content: NotebookLM automatically generates transcriptions of video and audio, transforming them into analyzable text. Purely musical content without dialogue or narration cannot be effectively processed since the system works exclusively with textual information.

Searching for sources¶

Below the add button is the section for searching sources on the web, which functions as a search engine with a field for defining the text prompt.

Two dropdown menus allow you to configure the search:

• The first selects where to search: on the Web or in your Google Drive connected with the same account
• The second defines the search type: Quick search or Deep Research for more thorough analysis

You can also start an exploratory search without specifying particular topics. The search description can include Google's advanced search operators like "site:" or "filetype:".

The result shows a preview of 3 links from a list of 10 selectable items for insertion into the notebook.

Source guide¶

Clicking on a specific source expands the column to show the Source guide: a document summary followed by a series of buttons representing the main themes automatically identified.

These thematic buttons, when clicked, automatically generate a response in the chat area on that specific topic. Below the buttons you'll find the complete source content; in the case of video or audio, this corresponds to the automatically generated transcription.

This view allows you to navigate directly in the original text, verify specific information, or explore sections of particular interest.

Managing sources¶

When sources are displayed in list view, hovering over a source name reveals three vertical dots. Clicking on them opens a popup with commands to delete or rename the document.

This function is particularly useful when managing numerous sources: it allows you to assign meaningful names that facilitate immediate content identification. It may also make sense to add numbering, for example to define a chronological sequence of documents.

In the upper right of the column is the button to collapse it toward the left edge of the window, to give more space to the chat area.