Using Gemini Notebook for Research
A new AI application for history writing.
I have been exploring AI applications in history research this year. One of my outstanding Midwestern Baptist Seminary Ph.D. students recently helped me learn to use a curated notebook for research. It is one of the most promising applications I have yet discovered.
I use Google’s Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM), which is free. There are many other notebook options out there, including ones that would likely have more functionality and capacity for sources. But Notebook is very easy to use and is quite adequate to far in my current research (for a Charles Finney biography, co-authored with Obbie Tyler Todd).
Here’s how Notebook works: you upload up to 50 sources, like books, articles, dissertations, newspapers, etc., and Notebook uses only those sources to answer research questions. Among the sources I have uploaded are scholarly books, articles, and dissertations related to Finney, as well as primary sources including the entire run of his newspaper The Oberlin Evangelist.
That is a LOT of sources, but I have also reached the 50 source limit and would need to pay for a subscription to upload more. (I can, however, create new notebooks with the same 50 source limit.)
When I come to a new topic, I ask Notebook something like “tell me about the Rome, N.Y. revival of 1826.” Based only on the sources I have uploaded, Notebook gives me a strong, clear outline of what happened, with hypertext links to the sources it is using. This means that I do not have to wonder about the quality of the sources, because I put them there.
This is a major improvement over Google searches of the internet, because you don’t have to sort through the dubious, random sources that AI and search engines use.
I would describe the results this way: imagine you have a good doctoral student as a research assistant. He/she knows how to find good primary and secondary sources, and what sources are unreliable. But here’s the essential difference with Notebook: it gives you reliable answers in about 10 seconds, rather than the days it would typically take an assistant to sift through sources and respond.
Now the usual disclaimers: I still need to go to the sources that Notebook highlights and read what they are actually saying. Like all AI programs, Notebook can’t adequately interpret the sources for me. Even if it could, it would raise ethical problems if I simply repeated what Notebook told me in the book I am writing. (Once set up, however, Notebook certainly delivers better research results than most undergraduates could on their own.)
I can use Notebook, however, to develop reliable familiarity with people, events, and sources, in an incredibly quick way. I will continue to refine my uses, but I envision using Gemini Notebook (or a similar tool) as a basic research aid from now on.
My American History 2nd edition is now available! Check out B&H Academic’s landing page.
“The Bible’s Quiet Role in the American Revolution” - my podcast with Museum of the Bible.