Digitization of the Archives of Plates of the Italian Astronomical Observatories and of the Specola Vaticana

A large-scale national project to digitize the archive of plates of the Italian Astronomical Observatories and of the Specola Vaticana has started in 2002 following a pilot program funded by the University of Padova in 2001. Identical systems, composed of commercial scanners plus dedicated personal computers and acquisition software have been installed in all participating Institutes. Two more elements make up the total project: the provision of high quality photometric sequences with the Campo Imperatore telescopes, and the distribution of the digitized information to all interested researchers via the international Web. This paper presents some of the activities carried out and results obtained.