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. 13 shown for “Photograph of airmail planes at Omaha, Nebraska” — 41 records examined, 6 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 11:19 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.
Head of Saint John the Baptist on a Charger, by Aelbert Bouts

Head of Saint John the Baptist on a Charger

Aelbert Bouts · ca. 1500

Public domainThe Met
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 planes at Omaha, Nebraska

Photograph of airmail planes at Omaha, Nebraska

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

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 · 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail planes at Elko, Nevada

Photograph of airmail planes at Elko, Nevada

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail being unloaded in Omaha, Nebraska

Photograph of airmail being unloaded in Omaha, Nebraska

Artist not stated in the record · July 2, 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail hanger in North Platte, Nebraska

Photograph of airmail hanger in North Platte, Nebraska

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail hanger at Iowa City, Iowa

Photograph of airmail hanger at Iowa City, Iowa

Artist not stated in the record · 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of airmail pilot Reuben Wagner

Photograph of airmail pilot Reuben Wagner

Artist not stated in the record · September 1, 1929

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 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 pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Photograph of airmail pilot E. Hamilton Lee

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Aviation goggles used by pilot Eddie Gardner

Aviation goggles used by pilot Eddie Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · May 6, 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. 1 matched · 1 examined · 0 dropped by the rights gate. Kept only where isPublicDomain === true and a file URL was published.1 shown
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 2959918 matched · 40 examined · 6 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 11:19 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.