Due to the incompletness of the available set of the POSS-II films we did not aim at the global task of search for candidates in the sample of galaxies with D<7 Mpc on the whole sky. The region inspected by us covers about 20% of the whole sky area. However in our list we expect to see the main part of new members of the Local Volume because our search covers the area occupied by all nearby groups. We suppose that a systematic study of these galaxies in the HI line as well as their multicolour imaging up to a deep limit for photometric distance determinations are tasks of current concern for large radio and optical telescopes.
As regards the theories of galaxy formation and evolution, the search for nearby dwarf galaxies outside galaxy groups is very important too. Especially it is reasonable to reveal dwarf systems in the volume of the Local Void, occupying an area of several steradians on the sky (Tully 1988). A survey of the Local Void region on the POSS-II and ESO/SERC is planned as the second part of this project.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the director and staff of the Astrophysical Institute Potsdam for hospitality and opportunity to work with the POSS-II Survey. We thank Dr. G.M. Richter for helpful discussion. We are indebted to G.G. Korotkova for the assistance in preparing the manuscript. This project is supported by INTAS-RFBR grant No. 95-IN-RU-1390.