Published: Monday, March 5, 2001 4:45 a.m. EST

Places in the heart, and on the Web
A chat with Pam Spaulding

By CARLENE HEMPEL

Pam Spaulding didn't know what skills she could offer at that first meeting of the Old West Durham Neighborhood Association. She's manager of the Information Technology department at Duke University Press, but that doesn't have anything to do with community activism, she thought. When she offered to throw a few pages of content and photos about the group onto a Web site, her role became clear. Online for about two years now, the site has grown from 10 pages to hundreds. It has a history section, a photo gallery and a personality. Spaulding says she believes the site (http://www.owdna.org/) has helped define the neighborhood because, through it, anyone can get involved. Connect's Carlene Hempel spoke with Spaulding about the association and its online address. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Q.Give us some background -- what's the group like and where exactly is the neighborhood?

A.I was involved with the neighborhood association casually and I wanted to become more involved. ... There's a core group of active people, and that's probably two dozen. But there are over 100 members in the neighborhood. It's only $5 per adult per household to join. And that gives them a twice-yearly newsletter and a flier. The neighborhood boundaries stretch from Broad Street west to Hillandale Road and from Englewood Avenue south to the Durham Freeway. It's a very old neighborhood. It was previously known as Pinhook.

Q.How did the Web site come about?

A.I don't do [Web design] professionally. I do my own Web page for my personal use. (http://pfsimple.com/) I did know how to find resources to do this. I offered it on a lark and thought it was a way I could make a contribution, because up until that point, our neighborhood didn't have high visibility.

Q.What was your plan for the site when you started building it?

A.There was really no ambition other than to make it a virtual tour. In the beginning it was just for our neighbors or for people who were thinking of coming to our area. That was a very small, focused area. So the site stayed about the same size for quite some time. But then John Schelp, our president and historian, was digging up all kinds of information about the neighborhood. So we developed this very visually rich history section. You can see pictures of the old mills that used to exist here. There are some great aerial shots of the neighborhood and what it used to look like, pictures of an old post office that used to be near by. The Web site sort of serves as an electronic scrapbook because a lot of these pictures exist in libraries where a lot of people aren't going to get exposed to them, or even know about them.

Q.Does anyone visit your site, other than your neighbors?

A.We have a guest book that people can come and sign. We've had people sign from all over the country. Some are people who grew up here. We've recently had a visit from an urban planner in Florida who just loves the idea of smaller, older downtowns getting revitalized because he's concerned with urban sprawl. These are the people who felt motivated enough to sign our guest book.

Q.How has the site impacted your members, other than those among that core group?

A.We have more people attending our meetings. The irony in developing something like the Web site and the listserv is that you can communicate effectively to a lot of people. Sometimes we have fewer attending the meeting because we are able to get the word out electronically.

Q.How does your group use its listserv?

A.I think it's been great for crime prevention and notification. Everyone who subscribes -- we tell them when the meetings are. We've recently had some traffic circles put in, and so an announcement was put out on the list that these traffic circles were being built. In addition to the listserv, I've put up a message board where we can recommend local people who we've used for yard work, painters, electricians -- the kinds of things you talked over the fence about with your neighbor.

Q.Isn't there something sad about e-mail replacing that chat over the fence?

A.You may not have as much person-to-person contact, but I think you may have more effective contact. It has also been instrumental in getting our voices heard at City Council. None of that would have happened. It's really different than having to go rounding up [comment] from board members, the old fashioned way -- which also brings up the problem, what about the people who aren't connected?

Q.Well, what about them?

A.Well, a lot of people are wired. But there are still a lot of people who aren't connected, so we make sure we go out and do that face-to-face contact.

Q.Why does this site mean so much to you?

A.When I say, 'I live here,' I can send them a URL and say, 'This is my neighborhood, these are the wonderful people I live with, this is the history of my neighborhood.' How many people can actually do that?