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 “Schizothrix mellea N.L. Gardner” — 40 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-10 20:37 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.
Schizothrix mellea N.L. Gardner

Schizothrix mellea N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 29 Jan 1915 to 1 Feb 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Schizothrix mellea N.L. Gardner

Schizothrix mellea N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 29 Jan 1915 to 1 Feb 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Schizothrix mellea var. minor N.L. Gardner

Schizothrix mellea var. minor N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 12 Feb 1915 to 15 Feb 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Endospora mellea N.L. Gardner

Endospora mellea N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 6 Mar 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Schizothrix thelephoroides var. minor N.L. Gardner

Schizothrix thelephoroides var. minor N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Schizothrix chalybea var. minor N.L. Gardner

Schizothrix chalybea var. minor N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 18 Jan 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phormidium hormoides Setch. & N.L. Gardner in N.L. Gardner

Phormidium hormoides Setch. & N.L. Gardner in N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1905

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Oscillatoria earlei N.L. Gardner

Oscillatoria earlei N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · Feb 1923

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Hypheothrix parciramosa N.L. Gardner

Hypheothrix parciramosa N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 1915

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Oscillatoria earlei N.L. Gardner

Oscillatoria earlei N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · Feb 1925

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Phormidium orientale var. breviarticulatum N.L. Gardner

Phormidium orientale var. breviarticulatum N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 14 Oct 1924

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Oscillatoria tortuosa N.L. Gardner

Oscillatoria tortuosa N.L. Gardner

Artist not stated in the record · 12 Feb 1915 to 15 Feb 1915

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. 27650 matched · 40 examined · 0 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 2026-09-10 20:37 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.