Digitisation / Cataloguing of non-textual objects: Digitized Astronomical Photoplates Archive and their Virtual Observatory Integration

German Observatories host huge collections of photographic plates, which lead to many discoveries. They are of great importance for astronomical studies across a longer time range, for stars, star explosions or asteroids, and even can assist in discovery of distant galaxies. A comprehensive digitisation of these collections of photographic plates is required for their use in astronomic work. The decay processes of the ageing photo emulsions call for immediate action to preserve the wealth of information of these 85.000 photographic plates.The project will provide high resolution scans, including metadata and additional scans of observer logs for these plates. The archive of the scans provides webinterfaces according to Virtual Observatory standards and conform to OAI-PMH.