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 “Scytonema hofmannii var. calcicola Hansg.” — 40 records examined, 0 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-10 20:39 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.
Scytonema hofmannii var. calcicola Hansg.

Scytonema hofmannii var. calcicola Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · May 1890

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Scytonema obscurum var. terrestre Hansg.

Scytonema obscurum var. terrestre Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Nov 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plectonema tomasinianum var. cincinnatum Hansg.

Plectonema tomasinianum var. cincinnatum Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1885

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Coleospermum goeppertianum var. minor Hansg.

Coleospermum goeppertianum var. minor Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Oct 1883

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tolypothrix distorta var. symplocoides Hansg.

Tolypothrix distorta var. symplocoides Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1886

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Tolypothrix penicillata var. tenuis Hansg.

Tolypothrix penicillata var. tenuis Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1889

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Plectonema phormidioides Hansg.

Plectonema phormidioides Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Jul 1886

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lyngbya calcicola var. gloeophila Hansg.

Lyngbya calcicola var. gloeophila Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Oct 1886

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lyngbya calcicola var. violacea Hansg.

Lyngbya calcicola var. violacea Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1886

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Hydrocoleum homoeotrichum var. calcicola Hansg.

Hydrocoleum homoeotrichum var. calcicola Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Aug 1889

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Lyngbya calcicola var. symplociformis Hansg.

Lyngbya calcicola var. symplociformis Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · Feb 1885

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Ochlochaete dendroides var. calcicola Hansg.

Ochlochaete dendroides var. calcicola Hansg.

Artist not stated in the record · 1891

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. 234886 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 20:39 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.