Fig. 1. Locations of the background sources used for H I absorption survey 2 & 3 are superposed on the Halpha image of the LMC from Kennicutt et al. (1995). Numbers at the upper right of the symbols indicate the new data. The positions showing no cool gas above the detection threshold are marked by circles; crosses describe the positions with detected absorption. The size of these symbols is proportional to the absorption integral. The optical boundary of LMC 4, the 30 Doradus complex and the leading edge are sketched