package installation question

[Steve Zatz]

The version of pysqlite in the ubuntu repositories is 0.4.3, which has
some known problems.  I am not familiar with debian but I see that in
the collection of "testing" packages is pysqlite 0.5.1-3 and I have
downloaded that package from the debian site as a .deb package. 
Having done that I am not sure what to do next to get that package
installed.  It looks like packages can be installed with dpkg but
before I screw things up, I thought I would ask if dpkg is the right
approach and exactly how you use it in this situation.  Thanks.