Ideas for migrating data to new iMac from faulty eMac?

Question

My wife's old eMac died, but she was able to copy her user folder (all 58+ GBs) to an external drive prior to it finally giving up the ghost. It was copied via finder (not cloned or done via Time Machine), so it doesn't appear to have permissions set (i.e., I can mount the disk on another computer and access all her files).
She needed her new iMac set up right away to finish some work, so only a few files have been transfered.
I don't know if Migration Assistant can deal with the files, but I'd rather not migrate her stuff at this point. Migration Assistant isn't particularly granular (i.e., you can't choose which apps or which email to transfer - it's all or nothing). I'd rather access her home folder (as the user) to clean out her files (i.e., email, downloads, iTunes, iPhoto, etc.) prior to migrating them to her new computer. At a minimum, I want to log into her old account to backup her contacts to transfer over (or access them some other way).
Can I set up a user account for her on another computer (same name and pw), go into the advanced accounts settings and point to her folder on the external drive, and then log into her account? Or do I need to do some terminal work?
I believe the HDD was corrupted by the HW failure, but if Target Disk Mode is preferable for what I want to do, then it might be worth some troubleshooting on the eMac to get Target Disk working.

Answer 1

"Copy the following items from your old Mac to the new Mac:
In your /Home/ folder: Documents, Movies, Music, Pictures, and Sites folders.
In your /Home/Library/ folder:
/Home/Library/Application Support/AddressBook (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Application Support/iCal (copy the whole folder)
Also in /Home/Library/Application Support (copy whatever else you need including folders for any third-party applications)
/Home/Library/Keychains (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Mail (copy the whole folder)
/Home/Library/Preferences/ (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Calendars (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/iTunes (copy the whole folder)
/Home /Library/Safari (copy the whole folder)
If you want cookies:
/Home/Library/Cookies/Cookies.plist
/Home/Library/Application Support/WebFoundation/HTTPCookies.plist"
excepted from, "kimaccdual: A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs" by Kappy and others.