Please HELP join these 2 iTunes folders in Windows 7 preserving album artwork & tags (discussion reply requested)

Question

(Discussion Reply Requested ) Please HELP join these 2 iTunes folders in
Windows 7 preserving album artwork & "tags"
I have searched and not found an up to date understandable answer as how
to join 2 working portable same (apple ID) user iTunes folders into one itunes folder
while above all else preserving hand edited Abum Artwork and hand edited tags.
( It was many hours of hand edited added Album Artwork and editing of tags )
Situation is Windows 7 ( 64 bit ) with current iTunes installed ( 2014-03-17 )
The hard drive crashed and the old \iTunes folder and all old contents have been copied and backed up.
The windows 7 64 bit and latest iTunes 64 bit has been re-installed cleanly ( no old music added )
Music from the iTunes cloud was then added/downloaded into iTunes
Now \itunes has 40 gig of music available to play.
Now I want to join the currently installed working \itunes folder ( 40 gig of music )
with  the old saved \itunes folder  ( 100 gig of music ) into just one \iTunes folder
with preserving the current Album Artwork and editing of "tags" of both folders.
I have seen previous answers that use words like " consolidate " , " export / import ",
" merge " , " apple home sharing " , " use explorer to copy  ..." , ect
none of which mentioned if the current Album Artwork
or tags survive unchanged from their current "specially edited" status.
I know their may be the ineviatable "duplicates", but there seems
to be several ways to handle them.  ( If you know the best way to
prevent or remove duplicates in this situation with joining two
iTunes folders in Windows please include that information also ).
Please provide an explanation of how to join these 2 iTunes folders
in Windows 7 into one \iTunes folder while preserving Album Artwork and tags.

Answer 1

Mike, thanks for the response. I will try this. I'll have to dig around here too, bc I want to know more about how I can import a windows xml file (while replacing the drive paths) and it creating a seperate itunes library with the pointers on the mac. Essentially, I have 2 libraries and there may not be a way around this with a windows machine and a mac - ive read plenty on Choose library on open, and mac to mac, windows to windows.
I also need to know more about what is getting stored in the album art folders. I believe it seems that when you select all, and copy the image in the artwork get info page its actually embedding these images in the files themselves, but if you paste into the left bottom artwork display pane its just adding where?? If I deleted the contents of this folder what would happen, should I not be copying this content?
If I update the images on the mac and swap out the drive paths and move the external drive back to the windows box, will i lose any updates I did while on the mac?
Good suggestion though, I'll try this out.