Google has added hundreds of textbooks to Gemini Notebook, available to students at no charge. The books come from providers in the US and India: OpenStax, Open Textbook Library and S Chand Publishing.
The announcement came in a post by Priya Venkatraman, a software engineer on Gemini Notebook, on 29 October 2026.
How it works
- Open a notebook in Gemini Notebook.
- Select Add sources, then Textbooks, to browse the catalog.
- Add a textbook. From then on, every answer in that notebook is grounded in the book, with inline citations and direct links back to the original passage.
Students can also turn a textbook into tailored study guides, practice quizzes and flashcards.
Part of a wider Google push
The textbooks are part of Expert Intelligence, a cross-Google initiative introduced in September 2026 to help people work with trusted sources inside Google's AI products. Before this update, users could already add eligible ebooks bought on Google Play Books.
A week later, on 3 November, Google announced that Guided Learning, Gemini's learning mode, is launching in Google Classroom worldwide. Read that story.
Why S Chand stands out
S Chand Publishing is one of India's best-known school and college textbook publishers, while OpenStax and Open Textbook Library are US sources of free, openly licensed textbooks. Having an Indian publisher in the first set of providers makes the feature directly relevant to students in India.
What is not yet known
Google's post does not say how many titles each provider has added, whether there are age or account limits, or which languages are covered. We will update this story when Google shares more.
Announced by Google on its official blog: read the announcement
