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 “Polypodium moniliforme var. minus Christ” — 40 records examined, 1 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-04 07:55 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.
Polypodium moniliforme var. minus Christ

Polypodium moniliforme var. minus Christ

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium loriceum var. umbraticum Christ

Polypodium loriceum var. umbraticum Christ

Artist not stated in the record · 1901 to 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium loriceum var. oligomeron Christ

Polypodium loriceum var. oligomeron Christ

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1894

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium thysanolepis var. bipinnatifidum Christ

Polypodium thysanolepis var. bipinnatifidum Christ

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1895

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium hastatum var. simplex Christ

Polypodium hastatum var. simplex Christ

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium pectinatum var. hispidum Christ in Pittier

Polypodium pectinatum var. hispidum Christ in Pittier

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium plesiosorum var. bakeri Davenp.

Polypodium plesiosorum var. bakeri Davenp.

Artist not stated in the record · 14 Nov 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium superficiale var. attenuatum Rosenst.

Polypodium superficiale var. attenuatum Rosenst.

Artist not stated in the record · Jan 1913

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Polypodium phyllitidis var. elongatum Hieron.

Polypodium phyllitidis var. elongatum Hieron.

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Artist not stated in the record · 15 Aug 1965

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Artist not stated in the record · 23 Jul 1965

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Melpomene moniliformis (Lag. ex Sw.) A.R. Sm. & R.C. Moran

Artist not stated in the record · 28 Jul 1965

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. 239171 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 2026-09-04 07:55 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.