Visualizing the registry: CommonsDB Explorer gets a dashboard

CommonsDB is a registry for metadata and rights information covering public domain and openly licensed digital assets. To provide the first comprehensive view of this data, we have added a new dashboard to its public interface, the CommonsDB Explorer.

A clear overview of registry data

Our data partners, Wikimedia Sverige and the Europeana Foundation, have so far contributed over 3.5 million declarations. Until now, visitors could only search for individual declarations or browse them at random in the Explorer. The new dashboard changes this by introducing a high-level overview of how the entire dataset breaks down.

The interface displays the platform's core metrics, including the volume of declarations, license distributions, and media types. It also tracks the number of distinct institutions acting as trusted data suppliers within the ecosystem.

Rights statements in declarations

Visitors can explore an interactive visual breakdown of the rights statements attached to these records. Because CommonsDB strictly supports machine-readable licenses that meet the Open Definition for free use, redistribution, and modification, the dashboard charts the exact distribution of our four supported statements: the Public Domain Mark, CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA.

Data partner contributions

A dedicated filter lets users isolate information from specific data suppliers. This allows anyone to examine individual institutional contributions, highlighting the exact metadata and rights information submitted by CommonsDB partners.

For instance, the chart below displays the distribution of licenses in the declarations made so far by the Europeana Foundation, listed in order of frequency.

Public Domain Rationale

When a declaration contains a Public Domain Mark or CC0 statement, contributors can include a legal rationale explaining why the asset resides in the Public Domain. CommonsDB maps these rationales to a curated list of Wikidata items that correspond to frequently used terms on Wikimedia Commons. These include ‘PD by holder’ (Q88088423) for works dedicated by the copyright holder, and ‘PMA 70’ (Q59542795) for items from countries with a copyright term of the author's life plus 70 years or less.

So far, only Wikimedia Sverige has utilized this option across a small proportion of its declarations, and the dashboard provides a clear breakdown of those specific rationales.

The main Explorer interface displays public domain rationales within individual declarations in a dedicated ‘PD Rationale’ field, as seen in this example.

Looking ahead

Providing a clear view of registry data supports our broader aim of building a reliable infrastructure for digital rights verification. In the coming months, we will continue to scale the registry toward our target of 5 million declarations. If your institution is interested in participating as a data supplier, please get in touch by email.