NotebookLMs Real Problem Isnt the AI - Its Adding Sources

Transcript

The Core Limitations of NotebookLM

[00:05] Karan Bavandi: People who use NotebookLM are very happy with it once the data gets in there, but they have a number of common problems. They say NotebookLM is great at synthesis, but it is weak at collecting. They also complain about ingestion being manual and the quality of the sources, noting that there is no preprocessing layer to make sure what gets into NotebookLM is high quality. The final issue is that the sources are trapped inside of each notebook and are not easily transportable. Those are the problems that Curator will solve for you. Let me show you how that works.

Syncing and Managing Folders with Curator

[01:05] Karan Bavandi: To demonstrate how Kurator integrates with NotebookLM, I'm going to use my Kurator AIMG community notebook. As you can see, it has 127 sources, which is quite a number of sources to enter manually. I'm going to show you how I have synced Kurator to NotebookLM, how I can quickly add new sources and edit what I have, how I preprocess the content before I bring it into NotebookLM, and how I can use the same content, or a portion of it, in my other notebooks.

First, we collect information or links under collection folders; that's where we add, edit, and move content. Here is my "AI Insiders" folder. These folders can be imported and exported using the property of the folder. However, to sync these to NotebookLM, you need to add them to published collections. Depending on their license, users get three, ten, or more published collection folders they can sync to NotebookLM. To do that, simply click on the three dots, go to your collection folders, select the folder you want, and it will appear under published collections.

[02:45] Karan Bavandi: Once you add your folder to published collections, you can sync them to NotebookLM. In order to sync, you need to have a NotebookLM tab open in your browser. Once you have synced the folder once, you will see additional items. If you don't have it synced, you will only get one option, but once synced, you will have two additional commands. Now, every time you make a change, add content, or delete content from this folder, you simply sync your published collections, and it's going to update your NotebookLM folder with the latest changes from Curator.

Preprocessing and Formatting Custom Content

[03:50] Karan Bavandi: Another common complaint by NotebookLM users is their ability to control transcripts. When you give NotebookLM a YouTube video, it pulls the transcript in a flat file. Kurator gives you the opportunity to use your own custom prompts and process that data.

For example, for this video on how to market to AI, I'll go to the video, and you can see that when I save this video, Kurator has the ability to execute a prompt. I have executed the YouTube SEO and GEO prompts, and I've also copied the description from the video itself. Rather than just the transcript, I can include additional information I want. I have transformed the transcript into a Q&A session with headlines, speaker names, and the description. You can see it is highly optimized for use in AI. Kurator gives you the ability to process your content before you add it, providing transparency into what goes into your NotebookLM notebooks.

Portability and Cross-Notebook Resource Sharing

[05:15] Karan Bavandi: Another common complaint among NotebookLM users is portability, as information is trapped inside of one notebook. As a researcher, you may want to take three or four sources from one notebook and use other sources to create a new study. Kurator makes that process really easy. All you have to do is copy and paste your sources between folders.

Let me show you how. I want to copy this post over here. All I do is right-click and select "Copy Curation Link." Kurator is smart enough to know that this is a YouTube video, so it will give me a timestamp. Kurator recognizes links through unique URLs, so when we copy links between folders, it is important that we assign some kind of reference. For YouTube, it needs to be a timestamp; for regular posts, it is some other reference point. I will click "OK" here.

[06:35] Karan Bavandi: Next, I will go over to my NotebookLM blog research folder and simply paste this curation link. It is really that simple. Now, when I open up this link in the browser and look to see where it is stored, I can see that it is in my NotebookLM blog research folder, complete with the timestamp. I could simply run a new prompt and have a new look at this. I could even have this inside the same folder if I want to preprocess my links in different ways.

Once I add it here, I go over to my published collections and sync this to my notebook on NotebookLM. As you can see in the dialogue, it added one and skipped seven. I used to have seven links in there, and now I have eight. When I go over to NotebookLM and look at the sources in the NotebookLM blog research, I can sort these by recent and see that "How to Market AI Lessons" has been added.

Advanced Browser Integrations and Conclusion

[08:00] Karan Bavandi: Another advantage you get when you have NotebookLM and Curator open at the same time is that Kurator filters are injected directly into the page. This allows you to sort your sources and address them using your content tags. With Kurator, you get better formatting, portability, and more visibility for your content inside of NotebookLM. Give it a try. Everything I showed you can be tried for free, so you can find out for yourself how it all works.