Thanks Tachyon! have been looking for this info for a day, exactly what i needed.
So i've gone ahead and installed my first module. I received an error:

ERROR: Can't create '/usr/local/share/man/man3' mkdir /usr/local: Permission denied at /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/ExtUtils/Install.pm line 479

I resolved by installing locally in my home directory as you suggested.
My question now is what to do with the installed module? I need to install 5 or so modules to setup Amazon Cloudfront and don't know how to manage them once installed.

- Should I leave the 'lib' folder as is?
- can/should i install the other modules to the same folder or should they be placed somewhere else on my machine?
thanks in advance and again for this article!
mo