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. 20 shown for “Ground Beetle” — 59 records examined, 12 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-05 07:03 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.
A tulip, a butterfly of the species Arctia caja (garden tiger moth), and a beetle (possibly a longhorn), by Barbara Regina Dietzsch

A tulip, a butterfly of the species Arctia caja (garden tiger moth), and a beetle (possibly a longhorn)

Barbara Regina Dietzsch · ca. 1750-60

Public domainThe Met
Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle

Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1914

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Glass mosaic inlay

Glass mosaic inlay

Artist not stated in the record · late 1st century BCE–early 1st century CE

Public domainThe Met
Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle

Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle, Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1934

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Scarab

Scarab

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1981–1640 B.C.

Public domainThe Met
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1923

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Mummy Mask of a Woman

Mummy Mask of a Woman

Artist not stated in the record · 60–70 CE

Public domainThe Met
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1911

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Scarab Finger Ring

Scarab Finger Ring

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1981–1802 B.C.

Public domainThe Met
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Scarabs

Scarabs

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1981–1802 B.C.

Public domainThe Met
Ground Beetle

Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1914

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Studies of a Blue Beetle and Insects, by Pieter Holsteyn II

Studies of a Blue Beetle and Insects

Pieter Holsteyn II · ca. 1650–60

Public domainThe Met
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Scarab

Scarab

Artist not stated in the record · ca. 1981–1950 B.C.

Public domainThe Met
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1923

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ground Beetle

Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1909

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Golden Ground Beetle

Golden Ground Beetle

Artist not stated in the record · 1921

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. 19 matched · 19 examined · 11 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.8 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 84362 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 2026-09-05 07:03 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.