This is the current landing page for the AIRS digital library database for AIRS members' research access. A link to the digital library is at the bottom of this page. Please review the following information before attempting to access the digital library directly.

The AIRS Database or Digital Library is under active development.

About the digital library

Its use is primarily for researchers, however certain collections will be of particular use to teachers, parents, community leaders, and practitioners. For ethical reasons, access to many of the audio-visual files is limited to researchers and other professionals who have created and been approved for an account on the AIRS site. The restriction arises in regard to consent forms signed for release of the data and in accordance with the ethics review boards in conjunction with Canadian Tri-Council Ethic policy.

There are currently three (3) themes in the digital library:

1. Development;
2. Education, and
3. Well-Being.

Each Theme has it own collection, each of which has its own sub-collections (studies, demos, and misc). The Development collection has some example clips in miscellaneous.

The AIRS database will ultimately contain a wide variety of data related to singing. In some cases, where permission has been obtained from the collector of the data and the persons involved in any aspect of it, the data may be considered public domain. In many other cases, access to the data is restricted to those researchers investigating a particular problem.

E.g.: researchers on vocal pedagogy who would benefit from access to audio-video recordings of a singing lessons taking place with a voice instructor and pupil and possibly pianist.

The participants would likely not wish this to be public but may be willing to give permission to researchers to study what goes on here, so as to develop a better understanding of vocal pedagogy.

The collection of information on children's acquisition of singing is referred to as CHIMES.

How to access the library

In order to access the digital library, members must register a user account on the AIRS Web site and must request that project membership permissions be granted to your account. Applications for non-project members may be considered on an individual basis and interested parties are asked to contact us if they wish to apply for access to a particular database.

Troubleshooting checklist

Please review the following checklist to confirm you do have access to the digital library before contacting us for support.

1. Verify that you are able to access your account by logging-in.
2. Confirm that you have contacted the AIRS staff and requested digital library access be added to your account.
3. Verify your username of the account you are using to log-in with the AIRS staff.
4. Contact AIRS for support and be sure to include a detailed description of the error you are experiencing, as well as the URL associated with it.

Known issues

Only a short portion of audio files will be heard when played in the browser. To hear the whole clip, download the file to your computer and play the downloaded file.

If you have problems viewing files please download the free VLC media player available for many operating systems.

Technical acknowledgment

The design of the database is a collaboration between the AIRS International Digital Library team and the Islandora VRE and Digital Library team of Robertson Library, UPEI, in conjunction with Ichiro Fujinaga of McGill University.

Access the digital library