OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
Images / art

Two archives, queried live.

Every record below comes from The Met or Smithsonian Open Access and was filtered on that archive’s own rights field before it reached this page. 12 shown for “Airmail schedule dispatch board” — 41 records examined, 2 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 15:54 UTC · fetched live for this request

Object
Public domainThe Met’s isPublicDomain field is true for this object.
CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian’s metadata_usage.access reads CC0 — a waiver, not an expired term.
Not shownAnything failing its archive’s rights field is dropped server-side and never appears here.
Airmail schedule dispatch board

Airmail schedule dispatch board

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1918-1929

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
First helicopter mail sack

First helicopter mail sack

Artist not stated in the record · August 20, 1949

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins and bag of first overnight airmail

Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins and bag of first overnight airmail

Artist not stated in the record · July 1, 1925

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail plane on take off

Photograph of airmail plane on take off

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Airmail Serves Every City poster

Airmail Serves Every City poster

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1937

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Airmail Serves Every City poster

Airmail Serves Every City poster

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1937

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail plane Curtiss JN-4H

Photograph of airmail plane Curtiss JN-4H

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot William Carroll

Photograph of airmail pilot William Carroll

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins

Photograph of airmail pilot Paul Collins

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Pres. Wilson at first regularly scheduled airmail service ceremony

Photograph of Pres. Wilson at first regularly scheduled airmail service ceremony

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
World map with airmail routes

World map with airmail routes

Artist not stated in the record · 1919-1950s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
What was queried

Where these records came from.

Two archives are wired, and only two. Each one is filtered on its own rights field — never on a title match, and never on the presence of an image file.

  • The Met Collection API (Open Access)Rights field: isPublicDomain. 1 matched · 1 examined · 1 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.0 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 17894 matched · 40 examined · 1 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.12 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-01 15:54 UTC, during this request. A completed pass is kept for 24 hours and replayed for an identical search, which is what keeps repeated queries inside Smithsonian’s 30-requests-per-hour allowance. A pass in which either archive failed to answer is never kept — an outage must not be replayed as though it were a finding about the catalogue.

Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress are deliberately not wired. Wikimedia was confirmed, on a live query, to return CC-BY material inside the same result set as genuine public domain works, and filtering it safely has not been designed yet. loc.gov was blocked by bot detection during the source evaluation, so its rights vocabulary has never been observed — and nothing here is built on a field nobody has read.

An image file is a rights claim. It never travels without its field.