  The present catalog is the result of our attempts to collect all published
photometric data on GRB afterglows observed in the pre-Swift era by the end of
2004 in order to gain statistical insight on the phenomenology of GRB
afterglows. Part I contains all published data on GRB afterglows in filters we
used in Zeh, Klose, & Kann (2005) to create reference light curves and derive
light curve parameters (mostly R band, but a few bursts have better data in
other colors) including the corresponding references. The catalog includes GCN
data as well as data published in refereed journals. No data have been omitted
or evaluated in any way (with the exception of a very small number of data that
turned out to be not related to an afterglow). Part II will contain color
information via the observed light curves in the other photometric bands (Kann
et al. 2006, in preparation). Using a simple computer program that can handle
strings our catalog is easy to use since all tables are provided in TeX format.
For an on-line searchable GCN catalog, we refer to the work done by Quimby et
al. (2003). Our catalog includes photometric data on 59 bursts (GRB 970228 -
GRB 041006) with altogether 4883 data points. Most data are from GRB 030329
(2759 data points), followed by GRB 021004 (393 data points), while 13 bursts
have less than 10 data points. In the case of GRB 030329 we have not included
the extensive data list which is on-line provided by Lipkin et al. (2004).
(Abridged)
