The recent development of facile routes for the production of inorganic nanorods and nanowires has resulted in an array of materials with intriguing optical, electronic, magnetic and structural properties. However, the production of functional materials from these nanoscale building blocks often requires aligning the nanorods on the micro- to macro- scales. The theoretical foundation for self-assembly of anisotropic rigid materials in solution dates back to Onsager (1949), but understanding the liquid crystalline phase behavior of nanorod dispersions is a nascent field formed by the intersection of nanotechnology, liquid crystalline science and colloid science. We report results on the orientational alignment of model dispersions of anisotropic nanomaterials including silver nanorods. We further demonstrate the morphological changes with solvent for silver nanorods and the promise of liquid crystalline assembly of these materials into aligned films and coatings. Our characterization techniques for the inorganic nanorod dispersions include optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and UV-vis absorption spectroscopy.