Last Updated on June 5, 2026, 12:08 pm ET
Research libraries are more than the collections they manage. But, a recent report argues, when outdated perceptions obscure the diverse offerings of today’s libraries, “this disconnect diminishes the library’s impact and influence within the parent institution, despite substantial contributions to institutional success.”
At ARL, we’ve found this to be equally true in the public policy arena. A recurring theme of our library-funding advocacy is highlighting library investments in services and infrastructures that support the research enterprise. The latest example of our work in this vein is the “Research and Information Data Service Inventory,” which I coauthored with Hilary Craiglow at Attain Partners. The inventory is designed to help libraries, sponsored programs offices, and institutional costing teams identify, categorize, and plan for library-related costs in a consistent and defensible way.
The inventory’s origin story goes back to the development of the FAIR (Financial Accountability in Research) Model in the summer of 2025, when a coalition of associations representing universities and independent research institutions came together to develop a more transparent model for reimbursing the essential institutional costs that accompany federally funded research. In feedback to the Joint Associations Group, research libraries wanted to make sure that the full range of research-supporting activities they engage in would be counted as allowable costs.
As members of a working group convened by COGR, Hilary and I then worked to build out this list of activities and to show how it related to the different cost categories of the FAIR Model. Even as that model continues to work its way through the legislative process, we have seen the inventory gain traction in other contexts, for instance, as institutions explore the merits of direct charging and other cost-recovery mechanisms. Most recently, as the US Office of Management and Budget issued proposed revisions to the Uniform Guidance for federal research funding, we updated the inventory to reflect changes that will, if implemented, affect allowable library costs.
We offer the inventory as a resource to our communities, without endorsing any particular method for making costs transparent or any mechanism for recovering them. We acknowledge that the inventory does not address every possible library activity supporting the research enterprise, and likely has a bias toward data-intensive scholarship. With these caveats, we hope the inventory will promote greater visibility of research library offerings and ensure that libraries have the resources required to meet researchers’ evolving needs.
