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. 15 shown for “Central Pacific Railroad mail car model” — 43 records examined, 20 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-31 21:43 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.
Animal pendant

Animal pendant

Artist not stated in the record · 1–1000 CE

Public domainThe Met
Central Pacific Railroad mail car model

Central Pacific Railroad mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1870-1885

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Griswold and Gunnison Confederate Percussion Revolver, serial no. 2651, by Griswold and Gunnison

Griswold and Gunnison Confederate Percussion Revolver, serial no. 2651

Griswold and Gunnison · 1864

Public domainThe Met
Burlington mail car model

Burlington mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1930-1970

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Laborers at Quartermaster's Wharf, Alexandria, Virginia, by Andrew Joseph Russell

Laborers at Quartermaster's Wharf, Alexandria, Virginia

Andrew Joseph Russell · 1863–65

Public domainThe Met
Louisville & Nashville mail car model

Louisville & Nashville mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · 1914-1957

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Chicago & North West railroad mail car model

Chicago & North West railroad mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · 1862-c. 1957

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Santa Fe Railway mail car model

Santa Fe Railway mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1960s-1974

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Owney tag

Atlantic & Pacific Railroad Owney tag

Artist not stated in the record · 1888-1897

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Advertisement for the New York Central Railroad

Advertisement for the New York Central Railroad

Artist not stated in the record · 1944

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Mail sack

Mail sack

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1890-1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Railway Post Office clerk in mail car

Photograph of Railway Post Office clerk in mail car

Artist not stated in the record · 1913

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
New York Central railway mail car model

New York Central railway mail car model

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1914-1968

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Bunkerhill Car House Owney tag

Bunkerhill Car House Owney tag

Artist not stated in the record · 1888-1897

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of wreck of the Southern Railway train

Photograph of wreck of the Southern Railway train

Artist not stated in the record · August 15, 1930

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. 3 matched · 3 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.3 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 1838715 matched · 40 examined · 20 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 2026-08-31 21:43 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.