You can now easily find and add textbooks in Gemini Notebook

Google is making Gemini Notebook (previously called NotebookLM) even more useful for people looking to use textbooks as reference sources. The company announced “Expert Intelligence” last month, which lets users import owned ebooks from Google Play Books into Gemini Notebook. Now, it’s taking things a step further with a new “Textbooks” feature.

Google has announced on its blog that users in the US and India can now access hundreds of textbooks from OpenStax, Open Textbook Library, and S. Chand Publishing directly in Gemini Notebook.

You can go to the “Add sources” option in an open notebook and select “Textbooks” to search for books. A handy filtering system lets you easily find textbooks for a particular topic and education level, and the search bar at the top helps you find the book you’re looking for.

Once you add a textbook, you can use Gemini Notebook’s tools to turn it into easily digestible content, create quizzes to prepare for an upcoming test, or ask questions and get answers grounded in the textbook’s content. The feature could help students by letting them add textbooks from an official source without manually finding each book, downloading it, and then adding it to Gemini Notebook.

On the other hand, by using free sources such as OpenStax and Open Textbook Library, Google could circumvent any potential copyright headaches that might otherwise arise from such an integration. The company has already faced copyright infringement allegations from authors and publishers over the apparent use of titles from Google Play Books to train AI.

The new “Textbooks” feature in Gemini Notebook has already started rolling out and should be available to all users in India and the US. Google hasn’t said anything about expanding the feature to other regions, but we will keep you updated as we learn more.