Building A Research Inventory to Tell Your Institution’s Story

abstract: Research inventories are interactive tools libraries are uniquely positioned to build and use in order to participate in institutional-level conversations about research priorities and resource investment. They can help build knowledge of past achievements in specific fields, identify local thought leaders, and gauge the size and impact of current research communities. Research inventories can be customized to track additional facets of research items, beyond those found in traditional bibliographies, and often contain robust options for searching or tagging items within them. This paper tells the story of the construction of a nearly 1,000-item research inventory at the University of Dayton focused on artificial intelligence research in Spring 2024. The paper focuses on the logistics and mix of methods used in building a research inventory under conditions of limited time and personnel and discusses narratives that can be unearthed through interpretations of the data gathered.