scopes within CI

[eluser]ramabodhi[/eluser]
So if in one of my libraries i call $this->CI->inventory = $this->getInv($username)

so far so good.. now i can work with $this->inventory in my views, but when i try to call it in my controllers I get "Message: Undefined property: CI_Loader::$inventory"

How do i taret ci->inventory from within a controller? Do i set the instance to a variable in my constructor, and then act like i'm in one of my libraries?

likewise when i set $this->something in a controller its not accessible in a view... I know the problem here is my syntax and how I'm pointing to the objects, but I'm not sure how to solve it.