How do I point my new Mac at my external iTunes Library?

Okay it's not really a new Mac, it's a replaced hard drive in my old iMac, but I'm setting it up as new to keep it as trim as possible. Pre-replacement I had my iTunes Media library set up on an external hard drive; the iTunes folder and it's inhabitants (Extras, Genius, Library.itl, etc) all resided on the iMac in the Music folder, but I'd moved the Media over to the external drive.
So...
What's the method for telling my 'new' copy of iTunes that I already have a media library, and it's 'over there' on the external drive? I know iTunes can be funny about this sort of thing so I don't want to get it wrong! I considered changing the location using the Preferences, but I wasn't sure if that was going to wipe out anything.
Also, given that I do have a complete backup of the original iMac drive (I just don't want to clone it back to the new one, junk and all), is there any way of doing this in such a way that I can preserve the playlists, play counts, etc? Can I copy over old preferences or library files? Not that bothered if I can't, but would be nice.

I think I just solved my own problem. I simply copied over the Library.itl file from my backup and replaced the same file that my fresh iTunes library had created. Opened iTunes, everything popped up

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