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 “Chamaesiphon ferrugineus F.E. Fritsch” — 40 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 20:12 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.
Chamaesiphon ferrugineus F.E. Fritsch

Chamaesiphon ferrugineus F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 3 Sep 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Chamaesiphon pseudo-polymorphus F.E. Fritsch

Chamaesiphon pseudo-polymorphus F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 5 Sep 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Chamaesiphon fuscus var. auratus Hansg.

Chamaesiphon fuscus var. auratus Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · 1891

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Xenococcus britannicus F.E. Fritsch in G.S. West & F.E. Fritsch

Xenococcus britannicus F.E. Fritsch in G.S. West & F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 2 Sep 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Chroococcopsis fluminensis F.E. Fritsch

Chroococcopsis fluminensis F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 1 Sep 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Entophysalis rivularis (Kütz.) F.E. Drouet

Entophysalis rivularis (Kütz.) F.E. Drouet

Artist not stated in the record · -- Jul ----

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phormidium priestleyi F.E. Fritsch

Phormidium priestleyi F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 3 Sep 2013

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Nostoc longstaffii F.E. Fritsch

Nostoc longstaffii F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · Feb 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Oscillatoria simplicissima var. antarctica F.E. Fritsch

Oscillatoria simplicissima var. antarctica F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 2 Dec 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lyngbya attenuata F.E. Fritsch

Lyngbya attenuata F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 2 Dec 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Microcystis parasitica var. glacialis F.E. Fritsch

Microcystis parasitica var. glacialis F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 13 Sep 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lyngbya scottii F.E. Fritsch

Lyngbya scottii F.E. Fritsch

Artist not stated in the record · 20 Jan 1902

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. The archive returned no records for this term.0 matched
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 5313 matched · 40 examined · 0 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 20:12 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.