SMITHFIELD - The red metal skeleton at Johnston Community College will become a new campus hub and the meeting point of digital data streams. It's not just a library, college officials say, but a leap forward in the school's campaign to expand its reach with telecommunications.

Besides a collection of 38,000 books, the building will be home to digital video technology that will allow teachers and students to connect from miles or oceans away.

"It's the future of what our business is," said Dee Dee Daughtry, vice president of curriculum instruction. "We're having to kind of meet students where they are."

When the library opens at the end of next summer, students and instructors will have access to two high-tech classrooms with high-definition video systems. Teachers will be able to use the systems to link up with other classrooms across the globe or record their lectures.

The college has similar video systems already, but the facilities and equipment will be a marked upgrade, said Terri Lee, director of instructional technology and distance learning.

Currently, her department is spread across cramped offices and classrooms carved from the college's existing buildings. "Here's the old dark room - this is now your office," Lee said. "We've been trying to make current technology work in old spaces for quite some time now."

With better distance-learning capabilities, she said, the college will be able to alleviate some of its space problems and reach more students.

JCC has other upgrades planned for its new library. The new building will include dozens of computer stations where students can access digital books, and four study rooms will include flat-screen TVs that can display video from laptops.

And a new listening and viewing room could do away with the 13-inch TVs and goofy headphones of yesteryear, Lee said. They'll have real books, with actual pages, somewhere in there too.

"Libraries are no longer libraries," Daughtry said. "That's why they're called learning resource centers."

The 33,000-square-foot building will be configured for technology from the ground up, she said. The college hired a technology designer to ensure that the building is well suited for the digital age, she explained.

Some of its rooms will feature laptop "garages" that can raise computers up or slide them back out of reach at the instructor's whim.

The future could bring even more wizardry. Lee thinks colleges will begin to employ "3-D caves," where students can immerse themselves in imagery -- nothing like that is in the current plans though.

Green design

The new library is set to be LEED Bronze certified, which means the building will meet "green" requirements set by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design group.

To gain the certification, designers have included lots of natural lighting, bike racks, a shower for bicyclists, priority parking for hybrid cars and more.

"It's an early step towards a greener campus," Daughtry said.

The building will feature mission-style architecture, making heavy use of stone and natural light. It will share colors with the rest of campus but represent a "drastic change," Daughtry said. "It's going to be a stunningly different building on this campus."

Crest of the wave

The completion of the new library will come toward the end of a half-decade construction surge for the college, Daughtry said. A county bond referendum, passed in the mid-2000s, funded a new public safety building and the renovation of two of the college's larger buildings; the library is the final bond-powered project.

"This is the end of our burst," she said. "We're going to see a big lull in construction."

That lull, though, will come as the college faces ever-expanding enrollment - this spring semester, 21 percent more students attended school at JCC than a year before.

"What's ironic is that the space that we're putting in place right now only helps us keep up with our current student demand," Daughtry said. "There's not a lot of room for future student expansion."

The college's next planned expansion is a new student life center, which would include classroom space, she said. However, that project is still unfunded. College leaders are hoping for a state bond to pay for the project, but money could be years or a decade away, Daughtry said.