How I do recover iPhoto Library from an external drive?

I stored user files on my Mac Mini on an external harddrive. The Mac Mini is now not functioning so I am trying to recover files from the external harddrive. Specifically I'm trying to recover pictures from iPhoto.
I can plug the external drive into another Mac and see its contents in Finder. I can see the "iPhoto Library" on this disk. It shows up in the Finder as a single 41 GB file instead of a file system. I want to be able to extract the photos from this library and back them up online.
I tried running Import from iPhoto on my functioning machine, but iPhoto won't let me click on the "iPhoto Library" file. I don't know if I need to reset my iPhoto library location, or if this is a application version issue. (I'm running iPhoto 6.0.6 on the working machine, but the library I'm trying to get into was created by a later version, I think from iLife '09.)
How do I read the photos in this iPhoto Library?
Thanks.

If you want to preserve that Library you'll need to upgrade from iPhoto 6 to iPhoto 09 on this other machine. The v6 version cannot read the 09 library.
Doing anything else will destroy the library - you'll lose Albums, Slideshows, keywords, Faces, Places, books, calendars etc etc erc and basically have to start over from scratch.
How to do it? Go to the external diks and find the iPhoto Library there. Right (or Control-) Click on the icon and select 'Show Package Contents'. A finder window will open with the Library exposed.
Your Photos are in the Originals Folder.
The Edited versions are in the Modified Folders.
If you import both you'll have duplicates.
Regards
TD

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Hi all - apologies if this has been posted before (but, couldn't find exactly what I need in the forums). I think I need to rebuild/erase, whathaveyou, my current iPhoto Library on my Mac because I'm getting a perpetual error/alert:
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TD-
Great, thanks for helping. I think I've got some useful info for you. I went throught the process you suggested, here's what I found out:
I viewed the rolls through the Pictures/iPhoto Library/Originals route. I see the rolls, but I do NOT think these images from the pc are there. Here's what's weird: Towards the end of my 'rolls' list (they're not named, just numbered), the rolls jump from 495 to 503. Though I didn't check all those rolls up to 495 (it would take forever!), I'm pretty sure those are my 'ok' files/rolls. I don't think they house any of the pix I was having issues with (the ones that came over from the pc). BUT...roll 503 DOES in fact have one image, and here's what happens when I click on it:
Only that jpg icon shows up where the picture normally would be viewed, it has a shortcut arrow in the bottom left corner (like that which would appear on any shortcut icon on your desktop), and the info for this image is different than the other ones:
Kind: Alias
Size: 4 kb on disk (usually these scouting camera images are upwards of 800 or 900 some kb)
Created: 9-23-07
Last opened: fetching...
And finally, the infamous alert comes up for this specific image: "The volume for bla bla bla cannot be found...." etc etc.
I'm pretty confident that the missing rolls that should be after 495 are from when I tried to transfer the folders of images from the IBM because those are the very last things I 'imported' into iPhoto. Thoughts??? One other weird thing I noticed, too, was some of my rolls do NOT show all of the images that are in the iPhoto folders...in other words, say roll 300 shows 4 images in the 'Originals' folder you asked me to go to. Well, each roll was created when I would download each card, so essentially I know that each roll represents each time a card was downloaded. But, when I go straight into iPhoto and look in that folder that represents when I downloaded each card, there are many more images there than are in the 'roll' folder for the same download...yikes, does that make sense?!
Thanks again...I feel we're getting somewhere at least!

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Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
iPhoto needs to have the Library sitting on disk formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Users with the Library sitting on disks otherwise formatted regularly report issues including, but not limited to, importing, saving edits and sharing the photos.
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Period
LN

How I do recover iPhoto Library from an external drive?

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