Load-path

[Kalyan K. Mukherjea]

Hello everybody,
        I have recently got hold of some very nice packages (at least,
they sound nice) from the internet. Can I put them in a directory like
~/new-packages and get emacs to load them at start up: putting  them in
the site-lisp directory seems unwise, since any move to a newer version
will clobber these.

        Could someone suggest what to put in my .emacs file to achieve my
aims.
        Thanks in advance,
        Kalyan