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 “Sav-A-Stamp postal scale” — 40 records examined, 3 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-01 02:48 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.

Sav-A-Stamp postal scale

Sav-A-Stamp postal scale

Artist not stated in the record · 1944-1946

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Coil stamp dispenser and scale

Coil stamp dispenser and scale

Artist not stated in the record · mid 20th Century

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
4c Scales of Justice, Factory, Worker and Family plate proof, by Bureau of Engraving and Printing

4c Scales of Justice, Factory, Worker and Family plate proof

Bureau of Engraving and Printing · August 15, 1961

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tentative Layout of Exhibit Space blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Tentative Layout of Exhibit Space blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tentative Layout of Exhibit Space blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Tentative Layout of Exhibit Space blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

First Floor Plan blueprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

United States Post Office whiteprint from the Chicago World's Fair

Artist not stated in the record · c. 1933

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. 3212 matched · 40 examined · 3 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 02:48 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.