Program can't find shared libraries

[Matt Miller <mmiller@extremezone.com>]

I've built an application that consists of serveral executable
programs and several shared libraries.  The programs need the 
shared libraries, but the programs can't find the libraries. 
Here is an error I receive when trying to start a program:

	/usr/local/panther/run/util/prodev: error while 
	loading shared libraries: libsmdb.so: cannot open 
	shared object file: No such file or directory

The app's build process put several shared libraries in a /lib
subdirectory of the app's home directory.  What's the best 
solution?  Here are some of my ideas:

1. copy the libraries to /lib or /usr/lib
2. put symlinks in /lib or /usr/lib 
3. set some environment variable or something to tell
   this particular suite of programs to check the app's
   special /lib directory.