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 “Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. melanoticus” — 40 records examined, 25 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 21:25 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.
Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. melanoticus

Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. melanoticus

Artist not stated in the record · [Not Stated]

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. mojave

Myrmecocystus mexicanus var. mojave

Artist not stated in the record · [Not Stated]

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus mexicanus navajo

Myrmecocystus mexicanus navajo

Artist not stated in the record · MAY, 1905.

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Atopomyrmex mocquerysi cryptoceroides var. melanoticus

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus melliger var. testaceus

Myrmecocystus melliger var. testaceus

Artist not stated in the record · [Not Stated]

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus yuma var. flaviceps

Myrmecocystus yuma var. flaviceps

Artist not stated in the record · 16 Nov 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus melliger mendex var. comatus

Myrmecocystus melliger mendex var. comatus

Artist not stated in the record · 8 Jun 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus melliger mimicus var. jesuita

Myrmecocystus melliger mimicus var. jesuita

Artist not stated in the record · 8 Jun 1902

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Myrmecocystus mimicus

Myrmecocystus mimicus

Artist not stated in the record · 1 Oct 1976

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Malvaviscus arboreus var. mexicanus Schltdl.

Malvaviscus arboreus var. mexicanus Schltdl.

Artist not stated in the record · 1882

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. 232801 matched · 40 examined · 25 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 2026-09-04 21:25 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.