shared libs, postgresql 7.1.3

[John Eo <johneo_(_at_)_sbcglobal_(_dot_)_net>]

Hi.  I'm new at this so please bear with me.

I'm having a problem with PostgreSQL 7.1.3, which I built and installed
from source, on my OpenBSD 3.0 - sparc.  When I try to run createdb, I
get:

/usr/libexec/ld.so: psql: libpq.so.2.1: No such file or directory
createdb: database creation failed

I checked with ldd:

/usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql:
        -lpq.2 => not found (0x0)
        -lz.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1.3 (0x80b8000)
        -lm.0 => /usr/lib/libm.so.0.1 (0x80c8000)
        -lutil.7 => /usr/lib/libutil.so.7.1 (0x80f8000)
        -lreadline.0 => /usr/lib/libreadline.so.0.0 (0x8104000)
        -lc.28 => /usr/lib/libc.so.28.0 (0x812c000)

But all the libpq* are in /usr/local/pgsql/lib.

And here are my questions:

1) Can I assume that, in general, any lib file with a ".so" in its name is
a shared lib?
2) What's the "proper" (least-hacked?) way to handle libs in OpenBSD?  On
the mailing list archive, someone suggested using LD_LIBRARY_PATH. 
Another suggested adding the path to /etc/rc.conf.  If I do the latter, do
I need to reboot to have change take effect?

Thanks in advance,

John