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

A two-year project to digitize the archive of plates of the Italian Astronomical Observatories and of the Specola Vaticana has started in 2002 with funds from the Ministry of the University and Research. Identical systems, composed by a commercial scanner plus dedicated PCs and acquisition software have been installed in all participating Institutes. The project means to provide high quality photometric sequences with the Campo Imperatore telescopes and to distribute the digitized information via the international Web. This paper concisely presents some of the activities carried out and results obtained so far