In our days astronomical research shows two trends - among others: On theone hand traditional astronomical plate archives are in danger of fallinginto oblivion while science is losing their information content. On theother hand there is an ever-growing need for long-term monitoring of largequantities of objects - the very information contained in the archives.On this background the workshop "Treasure Hunting in Astronomical PlateArchives" was convened in order to discuss the scientific potential of theworld's photometric and astrometric plate archives, ways of making themfully available to scientific research, as well as technical problemsconnected with this.