I cannot comment on uuid directly, but for me, this is yet another example of how assumptions can break things.

imho - if you know the exact version of s shared library that you want, calling cdll directly should be find. Maybe find_library is historic.

However, an advantage to calling find_library is that it should lead to an OSError if it cannot be loaded. But trapping OSError on a call to ctypes.cdll or testing for None (NULL) from find_library() is the option of a developer using the ctypes interface.

As far as libFOO.so.N - do you always want to assume it is going to be version N, or are you expecting to be able to work work version N+X?
Again, find_library() can give you the library name it would load - but a programmer must be aware of the platform differences (e.g., AIX returns not a filename, but a libFOO.a(libFOO.so.N) - as just one example.
p.s. as far as ldconfig being part of the problem on AIX (as it does not exist and can lead to OSError or just long delays, I have worked out a (pending) patch for ctypes/util (and ctypes/cdll) that may address the issues with uuid import on AIX. (see issue26439 for the patch)