i dnn't have first hand experience with this, but:
fedora core 3 ships with unixODBC. you can check your install with "rpm -q unixODBC". you will need this. beyond that, you can go to
http://www.unixODBC.org to get more info. google will also turn up info.
for java apps, why not switch over to JDBC. i assume (don't know for sure) that there is a JDBC driver for msaccess.