OpenGlyph — Catalogue of the American Public DomainJurisdiction: United StatesRev. 2026.08
OpenGlyph
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 “Francis Frith” — 64 records examined, 40 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-03 20:30 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.
[Pyramid at Dahshûr], by Francis Frith

[Pyramid at Dahshûr]

Francis Frith · ca. 1857

Public domainThe Met
Banks of the Nile at Cairo, by Francis Frith

Banks of the Nile at Cairo

Francis Frith · ca. 1857, printed 1870s

Public domainThe Met
[Valley of the Kings, Thebes], by Francis Frith

[Valley of the Kings, Thebes]

Francis Frith · ca. 1857, printed 1870s

Public domainThe Met
Damascus, by Francis Frith

Damascus

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
Nablous, The Ancient Shechem, by Francis Frith

Nablous, The Ancient Shechem

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
Portrait, Turkish Summer Costume, by Francis Frith

Portrait, Turkish Summer Costume

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
Wady Kardassy, Nubia, by Francis Frith

Wady Kardassy, Nubia

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
The Approach to Phil‘, by Francis Frith

The Approach to Phil‘

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
Abou Simbel, Nubia, by Francis Frith

Abou Simbel, Nubia

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
Sinai and Palestine, by Francis Frith

Sinai and Palestine

Francis Frith · 1860s

Public domainThe Met
The Largest of the Cedars, Mount Lebannon, by Francis Frith

The Largest of the Cedars, Mount Lebannon

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem, by Francis Frith

The Mosque of Omar, Jerusalem

Francis Frith · 1857

Public domainThe Met
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. 40 matched · 24 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.12 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 71234 matched · 40 examined · 40 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where metadata_usage.access === "CC0" and an image resource was published.0 shown

These figures describe the pass run at 2026-09-03 20:30 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.

Read the method
Elsewhere in the catalogue
Section 01Character index9 hand-compiled entries, each with sources, version scope, and a confidence value.Section 02NewsWhat has already cleared the US term, and what clears next — January 1, 2027.Section 03MethodThree status values, three confidence values, and copyright kept apart from trademark.