PIL in RHEL5: "import imaging" gives libjpeg.so error

If you are running RedHat 5, and receive a message such as:

libjpeg.so.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

then you may need to open the RedHat package manager, search for "jpeg", and install a more recent version (e.g. 7 or higher) of libjpeg.