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 “Photograph of airmail plane wreckage” — 40 records examined, 1 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 15:58 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.
Photograph of airmail plane wreckage

Photograph of airmail plane wreckage

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Lloyd Bertaud and unidentified individual

Photograph of airmail pilot Lloyd Bertaud and unidentified individual

Artist not stated in the record · September 6, 1927

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot James DeWitt Hill

Photograph of airmail pilot James DeWitt Hill

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane #299

Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane #299

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail planes at Omaha, Nebraska

Photograph of airmail planes at Omaha, Nebraska

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1927

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail plane on take off

Photograph of airmail plane on take off

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane

Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane

Artist not stated in the record · 1996

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail plane Curtiss JN-4H

Photograph of airmail plane Curtiss JN-4H

Artist not stated in the record · May 15, 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail planes at Washington, DC

Photograph of airmail planes at Washington, DC

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane and mail truck

Photograph of de Havilland airmail plane and mail truck

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1922

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and airplane

Photograph of airmail pilot Eddie Gardner and airplane

Artist not stated in the record · 1918

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

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. 2896722 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 2026-09-01 15:58 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.