  We have observed 28 local galaxies in the wavelength range between 1 and 2.4
mic in order to define template spectra of the normal galaxies along the Hubble
sequence. Five galaxies per morphological type were observed in most cases, and
the resulting RMS spread of the normalized spectra of each class, including
both intrinsic differences and observational uncertainties, is about 1% in K,
2% in H and 3% in J. Many absorption features can be accurately measured. The
target galaxies and the spectroscopic aperture (7"x53") were chosen to be
similar to those used by Kinney et al. (1996) to define template UV and optical
spectra. The two data sets are matched in order to build representative spectra
between 0.1 and 2.4 mic. The continuum shape of the optical spectra and the
relative normalization of the near-IR ones were set to fit the average
effective colours of the galaxies of the various Hubble classes. The resulting
spectra are used to compute the k-corrections of the normal galaxies in the
near-IR bands and to check the predictions of various spectral synthesis
models: while the shape of the continuum is generally well predicted, large
discrepancies are found in the absorption lines. Among the other possible
applications, here we also show how these spectra can be used to place
constraints on the dominant stellar population in local galaxies. Spectra and
k-corrections are publicly available and can be downloaded from the web site
http://www.arcetri.astro.it/~filippo/spectra.
