Today, more than ever, non-traditional college students are seeking power over their lives through education. However, unwilling to spend time learning how to find required information, non-traditional students often gather and process only limited amounts of information, thus isolating themselves from the power they seek and sealing their fate as the "information poor." Although academic libraries have undertaken special instructional initiatives in an effort to reach these students, traditional, point-of-need, non-credit and credit courses have inherent limitations. It is time to design a new library instruction based on the establishment of "fitness levels" of library skills competency that would be taught and reinforced across the curriculum, and to redefine the relationship between library and classroom faculty so that the librarian is admitted more directly as a partner in the instructional design of research assignments. The most essential component in such a program would be the development of the fitness level of library skills for non-traditional students, who require instruction defined in terms of intellectual access to the collection as well as in terms of teaching the basic logic of library use and research strategy. The result of such an information skills curriculum would be a more independent, more academically capable student. (KM)