Black, Asian and blind people in Kirklees are being targeted under two new national initiatives to promote literature.

Kirklees Council is one of 30 local authorities selected to take part in the three-year Branching Out project to encourage people to read less mainstream areas of contemporary writing which are under-represented in most public library collections.

This includes experimental fiction and poetry, gay and lesbian works, black British writing, fiction and poetry in translation.

The Arts Council-funded project will particularly involve people aged 18 to 30 and readers from the African, Caribbean and Asian communities.

The Council will have to commit £1,000 from its book fund towards buying books to support the scheme.

Catherine Morris, the Council's literature promotion co-ordinator, said: "We have already touched on some of the areas of writing on which the project will focus.

"And between two thirds and three-quarters of Kirklees' library staff have already been on some sort of training for reader development and book promotion.''

The second innovative project is called Feeling Your Way. It aims to develop a website for blind people and is being started by the National Library for the Blind.

With the help of a £95,000 National Lottery grant, the project will use the latest technology - including speech synthesis software - to give people unable to read print access to books.

Miss Morris said: "The idea is to give visually impaired people the same experience as that of sighted person walking into a bookshop.

"The website will give them the ability to browse and to choose, opening up a whole world of reading to them.''

The plan is to launch the website during the second of a three-year pilot phase, after which it is hoped to take the project nationwide.

The Council, as one of six local authorities involved in the project, will take part in the market research, staff training and piloting of software for the website.

The National Library for the Blind hopes to have 300 regular users of the website by the end of the third year and a long-term potential of 200,000.

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