We live in an increasingly information-based society. A concomitant result of entry into this new era has been the accumulation, at an unprecedented rate, of the volume of information. This paper describes how the flood of information has impacted upon the academic library and how the library has responded to the continuing challenges of access. It also describes the library's efforts to ensure that students are able to understand and use the expanding range of access tools, from the print index to the computer-assisted catalog. A description of the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport's latest bibliographic instruction course is provided as an example of such efforts. Finally, this paper re-states the meaning of information literacy, as defined by the American Library Association's Presidential Committee, in the context of the academic library and its student users. (6 references) (Author)