Can I keep my iTunes library solely on an external drive?

I have the macbook air with 128gig HD. I currently have a Windows laptop with a bigger HD housing my itunes network with all of my music and digital copies of movies. I've been using this computer as my primary laptop since I bought it (love it too much) and was considering taking the library over to this computer. Unfortunately with all the movies, it takes up a huge amount of HD space. I have a 500gig external drive. Can I have my itunes library on that, and plug it in when I want to sync or use itunes? Or does it all need to be on the actual computer's HD.
(Fingers crossed a cloud-based storage system somewhere in NC makes this all irrelevant later this year)

Hey
No problem keeping your itunes library on an external drive, just follow the instructions here to move it
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1364
In future make sure your external drive is connected and detected by your computer before opening iTunes.

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