H 20: NotebookLM (10 pts)

What You Need for this Project

Purpose

To set up NotebookLM, a useful study assistant using AI to process reference materials, search them, and explain them.

Find Reference Materials

Find a textbook or other source of reference material you need to study.

For this project, we'll use this NIST document, which is 492 pages long:

NIST Special Publication 800-53 Revision 5: Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations

Creating a NotebookLM Notebook

In a Web browser, go to:
NotebookLM
Click the "Try NotebookLM" button.

If you are prompted to, log in with a Google account.

The NotebookLM home page opens, as shown below.

Click the "Create notebook" button.

Click the Websites button. Paste in this URL:

https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-53r5.pdf

Click the Insert button.

Wait a few seconds for NotebookLM to upload and process the document.

A page appears titled "NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Security and Privacy Controls", as shown below.

Summarizing Content

At the bottom, enter this prompt:
Summarize the purpose and contents of this document in a few sentences, assuming that I am new to the field and do not understand many technical terms.
A summary appears, as shown below.

Note: When I did this on 4-26-26, it said "the system was unable to answer." If that happens to you, just skip ahead and submit the flag.

Analyzing Content

Enter this prompts:
What are the most important three controls a federal agency should implement? Make your answer brief and non-technical.
What are the most important three controls a home user with only a few devices should implement? Make your answer brief and non-technical.
Compare the answers. Notice that NotebookLM only uses the source materials you told it to, and does not go beyond them--it refuses to guess at an answer not contained in those documents. Therefore, it does not hallucinate like general-purpose Large Language Models do, and is far better than ChatGPT and its ilk for students.

Flag H 20.1: Warning (10 pts)

Look at the bottom of the NotebookLM page.

The flag is covered by a green rectangle in the image below.

Posted 5-29-25
Minor updates 4-26-25