Playing songs from external hardrive

Hi, my toshiba laptop finally died earlier this week so i decided to get an apple because of the luck i had with our desktop at home, despite it costing more than i thought, since it no longer comes with appleworks,
but back to my problem. I want itunes to play the songs through my external hard-drive but i cant figure out how to add the files on to my itunes library. If go to add file to library it adds it to my apple harddrive... can anyone offer any help?

You can also select the iTunes library you want to work with if you do the following. When launching iTunes, press and hold the option key. This will make iTunes prompt you for the library you want to work with. Navigate to the iTunes library folder in your external drive and choose it. You will have to do this again when the external drive is disconnected and you launch iTunes the next time around, only this time select the iTunes library in your internal hard drive.

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