Armchair traveling through the WWW

When it comes to armchair travel, there’s always The Travel Channel and those coffee table books featuring aerial views of European cities that you’ve probably got sitting around somewhere, but why not surf the Flickr Commons as an alternative to dusting off those books?

Just last week, Chicago’s venerable Field Museum joined the Commons, adding over 480 images from their collection to the open-use, copyright-less area of Flickr. The Field Museum now joins other Commons partners like The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian, National Galleries of Scotland, and Quebec’s Musée McCord.

The move of some of these museum photography collections to the Internet marks the development of a new sort of museum travel, whereby prospective visitors, the homebound, and those who are already fans of the collections may explore beyond visiting hours and guided tours. Even the avid photographers on Flickr are taking it upon themselves to capture a museum’s content for posterity; The MoMA Project group on Flickr boasts a staggering 30,200+ photos taken within the confines of the New York City museum alone.

Flickrization is also another step to preservation of urban history in the virtual realm, as Chicago’s Field Museum has added a gallery of their 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition images and vintage photos of attractions like the Lincoln Park Zoo. With open and free access to these archives, staying in on a rainy day to indulge in a little armchair traveling has never seemed so enlightening.