Backing up itunes database

I am in the process of creating an itunes library with about 1200 playlists. My audio files are kept on an external hard drive, so  am not worried about losing them if my Mac mini or itunes crashes. Can someone tell me if there is a way to back up the itunes database so I won't have to go thru the arduous process of recreating all those playlists and re-importing all my files? I'm using itunes 10.7. Thanks.

Choose Go to Folder from the Finder's Go menu, provide ~/Music/ as the path, and back up the iTunes folder inside.
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    In short, when I go back beyond a week in time machine I cannot find any .itl or even any of the .itdb or .xml files on my mac that I can restore with time machine.  The only version that is there is for the current library which is missing 99.9% of the content.
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