Link Love: 4/8/2011

• 

  Umm, this definitely wins the award for my most favorite new discovery in an archive. How did Michael Jackson do that off the hook lean in his dance in “Smooth Criminal”? Apparently with a patented device now found in the Records of the Patent and Trademark Office at the National Archives.

• Here’s some electronic archivist trivia: what determined the length of the original audio CD? The answer may surprise you.

• Behind the scenes. Check out how the Smithsonian’s Office of Exhibits Central makes insects feel more at home with incredibly realistic looking plants made especially for the National Museum of Natural History’s Insect Zoo.

• The Tate Museum in London has put together Archive Journeys—online exhibits exploring the history of the Tate Museum and the art world that helped shape it through the museum’s archives (which were recently made accessible online for the first time).

• Our former intern, Jess Kahan, won the Archivist Romance Novel Contest over at ArchivesNext. Congrats, Jess! [via Jennifer Wright, SIA]

• As a capstone to our Women's History Month additions to our Women in Science set on the Flickr Commons, it's nice to hear that there are "significant strides in hiring, promoting, and supporting women scientists and engineers" at places like MIT [via Effie Kapsalis, SIA].

• FYI: Archives Outside has a nice overview about how to properly handle archival materials on their blog.

• Duke University’s AdViews, a collection of nearly 9,000 digitized vintage television commercials, is now available on the Internet Archive. There are a ton of hilarious and strange ads to explore, including this one, in which kids and their parents (cowboys?) get really excited about their dental checkups…:

P&G: Crest Toothpaste, 1980 (dmbb14049), Courtesy of Duke University AdViews and the Internet Archive.