How do I tell if I am on my mac or my (connected) hard drive?

I am in the process of moving my iphoto and itunes off of my Mac onto an external hard drive. I have read the simple instructions given in another thread:
How to move your iPhoto library to an external hard drive.
I am at the point where I choose between the two libraries to tell the computer where to store the photos, and send the future photos.
My question is: How do I see where I am - computer iphoto file or external hard drive iphoto file? I choose the second library, but I see no indication that I am seeing the file from the hard drive. Is it specified anywhere? How do I tell?
I will bet it is some simple thing I am just not seeing it. Thanks in advance for your help!

Thank you, Limnos - I appreciate your help.
Okay I see something when I hold the option/alt button. Under the 2 libraries, there is a line that starts with either the word users/ ...(my computer) or volumes/... the hard drive name. The reason I have to make sure which volume I am seeing my iphoto on, is that I need to delete the files off of my computer to save space. I want to make sure all of my photos are safely stored before I delete anything. So I have designated the library on my external hard drive. Then I close down iphoto. Later, I open iphoto and at that point, I just have to trust that I am seeing my photos from the hard drive? Because I do not see any other indication that I am on the hard drive.
I also have thousands of photos stored in Adobe Photoshop Bridge application, which are not in iphoto. These picture files have been copied to the external hard drive.
I guess I will delete one from my computer before I delete the entire set. Obviously I am in fear and trembling before I delete. I do have time machine backups on different external hard drive, but that one is almost full as well as my computer.
If you have any other advice, I will be certainly be grateful.

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How do I tell if I am on my mac or my (connected) hard drive?

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