Despite progress made by academic libraries in advancing their instructional activities, their teaching role continues to be predominantly restricted to limited classroom engagements with students. Overwhelming professional support has been dedicated to practices that insist on disciplinary context and collaboration as the most viable mechanisms for information literacy education. This article argues for a more direct and involved credit-bearing role. It takes an approach that asserts the generic contribution of the library for development of information literacy competencies, which form a foundation for more successful discipline-based consolidation of such desired competencies. It also argues that granting the library the right to offer credit-bearing classes to achieve such a goal would legitimize the library's educational contribution. (Contains 66 notes.)