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 “Spirogyra illinoiensis Transeau” — 40 records examined, 7 dropped by the rights gate.

Archives queried 2026-09-10 20:21 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.
Spirogyra illinoiensis Transeau

Spirogyra illinoiensis Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · 15 Jun 1911 and 20 May 1913

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra illinoiensis Transeau

Spirogyra illinoiensis Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · 15 Jun 1911 and 20 May 1913

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra punctiformis Transeau

Spirogyra punctiformis Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · 8 Jul 1914

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Artist not stated in the record · 20 May 1913

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra floridana Transeau

Spirogyra floridana Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · Mar 1878

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Artist not stated in the record · May 1901

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra porangabae Transeau

Spirogyra porangabae Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · 22 Oct 1935

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra maravillosa Transeau

Spirogyra maravillosa Transeau

Artist not stated in the record · 9 Jul 1935

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Artist not stated in the record · 4 Apr 1932

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Spirogyra velata var. occidentalis Transeau in Collins et al.

Artist not stated in the record · 26 Apr 1932

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra setiformis

Spirogyra setiformis

Artist not stated in the record · 17 Nov 1910

CC0 (public-domain equivalent)Smithsonian
Spirogyra irregularis

Spirogyra irregularis

Artist not stated in the record · 27 Jul 1908 and 20 Sep 1912

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. 756 matched · 40 examined · 7 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 20:21 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.