Because the "can I" is VERY erratic. I can build some shared libraries, but cannot build others. I do not understand the difference between these libraries at the moment, however I DO know that absence of the PIC option causes the error.

Matt, I've used PIC before to sidestep errors associated with linking libraries in the wrong order in the call to the linker. Have you ruled this out as your problem for the non-PIC libraries? And how the heck do you build shared libraries that aren't PIC? ~~A