  Spectral synthesis is basically the decomposition of an observed spectrum in
terms of the superposition of a base of simple stellar populations of various
ages and metallicities, producing as output the star formation and chemical
histories of a galaxy, its extinction and velocity dispersion. The STARLIGHT
code provides one of the most powerful spectral synthesis tools presently
available. We have applied this code to the entire Six-Degree-Field Survey
(6dF) sample of nearby star-forming galaxies, selecting dwarf galaxy candidates
with the goal of: (1) deriving the age and metallicity of their stellar
populations and (2) creating a database with the physical properties of our
sample galaxies together with the FITS files of pure emission line spectra
(i.e. the observed spectra after subtraction of the best-fitting synthetic
stellar spectrum). Our results yield a good qualitative and quantitative
agreement with previous studies based on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
However, an advantage of 6dF spectra is that they are taken within a twice as
large fiber aperture, much reducing aperture effects in studies of nearby dwarf
galaxies.
