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 mail streetcar in St. Louis, Missouri” — 64 records examined, 49 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-09 19:52 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.
Penny Picture Display, Savannah, by Walker Evans

Penny Picture Display, Savannah

Walker Evans · 1936

Public domainThe Met
Photograph of mail streetcar in St. Louis, Missouri

Photograph of mail streetcar in St. Louis, Missouri

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1896

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of US mail streetcar

Photograph of US mail streetcar

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1898

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of mail streetcar in Washington, DC

Photograph of mail streetcar in Washington, DC

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1900

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of interior of mail streetcar in Boston

Photograph of interior of mail streetcar in Boston

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1899

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of US mail streetcar

Photograph of US mail streetcar

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1896

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Overland Mail employee's notebook

Overland Mail employee's notebook

Artist not stated in the record · 1859

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
St. Louis, Missouri Owney tag

St. Louis, Missouri Owney tag

Artist not stated in the record · 1888-1897

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of mail streetcar in Boston, Massachusetts

Photograph of mail streetcar in Boston, Massachusetts

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1900

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Item of ephemera with name Carrie Roby

Item of ephemera with name Carrie Roby

Artist not stated in the record · 1900s-1950s

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
"Meatless Menu" item of ephemera

"Meatless Menu" item of ephemera

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1930

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
US Army Quartermaster's Department letter

US Army Quartermaster's Department letter

Artist not stated in the record · November 1, 1862

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Rocheport, Missouri RFD patrons' names book

Rocheport, Missouri RFD patrons' names book

Artist not stated in the record · 1900s-1950s

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. 6340 matched · 24 examined · 23 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. 7484868 matched · 40 examined · 26 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 2026-09-09 19:52 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.