First, the formatting of your post is poor, go read Writeup Formatting Tips. This link is displayed within the tips displayed below the node composition textbox. Read those tips.

Read perltoot, which is a fine OO tutorial and will answer most if not all of your questions.

How can I create a package that allows me to use scalars within that package that are Global to the package, but Encapsulated from the rest of the cruel mean world?

Choose any of these:

package Records_tagged;

$Records_tagged::link_file = '/path/to/some/file'; # fully qualified s
+calar
our $link_file;                                    # lexical scoped gl
+obal
use vars qw($link_file);                           # package scoped gl
+obal
[download]

See our.

But from your code it is not clear wether you need package globals at all.

How you call the nethod new?

package Records_tagged;

use strict;

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = shift;  # this only makes sense with Records_tagged->ne
+w(\%hash)
    $self->{link_file} = undef;
[download]

Are you passing in a hash reference? If not, you want to say

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my $self = {};     # create an anonymous hash
    $self->{link_file} = undef;
[download]

--shmem

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}