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 wreck of the Southern Railway train” — 40 records examined, 19 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-08-31 23:20 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.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. Results from the remaining archive are shown unchanged — nothing is substituted for a source that did not answer.

Photograph of wreck of the Southern Railway train

Photograph of wreck of the Southern Railway train

Artist not stated in the record · August 15, 1930

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of postcard of wreck of the Delaware and Hudson train

Photograph of postcard of wreck of the Delaware and Hudson train

Artist not stated in the record · September 4, 1908

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of post card of wrecked train near Beitner, Michigan

Photograph of post card of wrecked train near Beitner, Michigan

Artist not stated in the record · August 20, 1919

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of the wreck of the Boston and Maine train #302

Photograph of the wreck of the Boston and Maine train #302

Artist not stated in the record · November 13, 1954

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of wreck of the Great Northern Fast Mail train at Wolf Point, Montana

Photograph of wreck of the Great Northern Fast Mail train at Wolf Point, Montana

Artist not stated in the record · 1934

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Train Wreck Cover

Train Wreck Cover

Artist not stated in the record · 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Wanted poster for the DeAutremonts

Wanted poster for the DeAutremonts

Artist not stated in the record · 1923-1927

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Railway Post Office mascot Owney and mail carrier

Photograph of Railway Post Office mascot Owney and mail carrier

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1895

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Pullman-built Railway Post Office and baggage car

Photograph of Pullman-built Railway Post Office and baggage car

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1920

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Railway Mail Service clerks in Kansas City, Missouri

Photograph of Railway Mail Service clerks in Kansas City, Missouri

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
(30) 19118 Uncle Sam Provides for Comfort of His Soldiers. Colored Troops En Route to France Taking Train Rest at Railway Division Point, by Keystone View Company, American, 1892 - 1972

(30) 19118 Uncle Sam Provides for Comfort of His Soldiers. Colored Troops En Route to France Taking Train Rest at Railway Division Point

Keystone View Company, American, 1892 - 1972 · 1917 - 1921

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Photograph of Pullman-built Railway Post Office car

Photograph of Pullman-built Railway Post Office car

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1885

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. HTTP 403 from collectionapi.metmuseum.org. No records from this archive are shown for this query.Unavailable
  • Smithsonian Open Access API (api.si.edu)Rights field: content.descriptiveNonRepeating.metadata_usage.access. 3170087 matched · 40 examined · 19 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 2026-08-31 23:20 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.