This content was created by Joe Houghton. This content was uploaded by Joe Houghton. This is a YouTube video titled "Joe Houghton on creating a Google GEM based on a NotebookLM notebook optimised" (created 2026-01-30) featuring Joe Houghton, a student on the D4B Master’s programme (Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity, accelerated part-time). In a ~5-minute tutorial-style walkthrough he demonstrates how he organizes module readings on his Mac, uploads PDFs/Word docs into a Google NotebookLM notebook (e.g., “D4B Digital Transformation”), and then creates a custom Google Gemini “gem” (e.g., “D4B Digital Transformation Coach”) that references the NotebookLM notebook so the gem can answer queries across all the consolidated study materials (he recommends guided learning mode). He also mentions creating derived assets (podcasts, summaries) and credits a tip from Richard Harper in a WhatsApp group.
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Hi there, my name is Joe Houghton and I'm doing the Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity modules this semester on the D4B Master's programme. I'm on the accelerated part-time track and this is just 5 minutes on how you can use Google Gemini and GEMS in conjunction with Google's Notebook LM to help you pull all your study material together and then use the AI to query across lots of study material at once. So the screen that I'm sharing at the moment is showing you in Finder— I'm on a Mac— how I'm structuring up my folder for the Digital Transformation module, and you can see that I've got Session 2 and Session 1, and all the readings and bits and pieces that have been, you know, made available to us. I'm downloading those all into a folder and then naming them S1, S2, depending on whether they came from, you know, Session 1 or Session 2. Okay, so I'm assembling all these on my computer, but that's fine. You've still got to read them all individually, and you can't do a lot with them in there. So if I switch over into my browser, and you go to NotebookLM, so just Google NotebookLM, set up a free account. You can set up up to 50 notebooks in NotebookLM. Create yourself a notebook. I've created one, and I've called it D4B Digital Transformation. And then one of the things you can do is you can add sources. So you can upload files, and then if I come over to Digital Transformation here and Readings, or, you know, my lecture sessions, okay, then you can just select and upload all these PDFs, Word docs, that kind of stuff into your notebook. And when you've done that, they all appear down here on the left-hand side. And then, and I'm not going to go into how you use NotebookLM, but you can basically run queries against all these sources at once. Okay, so this becomes a curated dataset for this digital transformation module. Okay, and I'm, you know, as the sessions go on, I'm going to put all the material from every session into that notebook. So all my digital transformation stuff will be Okay, that's fine. What you can also do is you can come out to Google Gemini, and Google Gemini lets you set up these things called gems, which are kind of like little versions of Gemini that you can give specific instructions to. So if we come into gems, okay, and there's gem managers and things here, okay, and you create a new gem. So let's give it a name. So I'm going to call this, you know, D4B Digital Transformation Coach. Okay. You don't have to put a description in. Instructions. Okay. So be a coach and help me learn the material. On digital transformation. And I need to learn how to spell. There we go. Okay, so that's my instructions. Now, the default tool, I'd suggest that you set it to guided learning, but you don't have to. Okay, so I've set mine to guided learning because that puts you into a kind of Q&A Socratic dialogue with the gem. But the key bit here is down here, Knowledge. Now, rather than adding all those files individually, you can now add a NotebookLM notebook. And this is relatively recent. So click on NotebookLM and then choose the notebook that you want it to reference. In this case, it's this one here. And add that to the gem. Okay, and once you've done that, you save the gem. And that gem is now available to you. And you can open it and start a chat. And it's there in your gems list. Okay. And you can start asking questions. And that is now referencing everything in your notebook, LM notebook. Okay. So all the sources are there, but also all the other stuff is in there. So I've created audio podcasts and summaries and different types of reports. Based on some of this material, and that is all available to that gen. So it's a really, really useful way of kind of consolidating all your learning sources into one place. I hope that helped. I'd spotted some chat in the WhatsApp group, and Richard Harper had mentioned that he had done this, so that made me prick my ears up. So thanks, Richard, for the tip. And hopefully showing everybody how to do it is of benefit as well.
