My hard drive crashed.  I saved my library on an external drive.  How do I import into a newly created iTunes library?

The communities are new to me....
My hard drive crashed and I lost my iTunes library.  I had my music backed up on an exernal drive.  Now that I've started over on a new hard drive and installed iTunes again, it is a newer version and I can't seem to figure out how to import my old iTunes library from my external drive into my new library on my new hard drive.  Does anybody have an easy answer?
Much appreciated.
Dave

How to correctly move your media:
iTunes: How to move the library to an EHD

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