Restored iTunes Library from backup, but Missing Artwork

Hello
I had to reinstall iTunes 8. Fortunately, I had a clone of my HDD from just the day before. After the iTunes reinstallation, I replaced the iTunes Library and iTunes Music Library.xml files with my back up versions. Once I opened iTunes it took its time rebuilding the Library with the result being my ratings, play counts, and lyrics all where they were supposed to be. I am happy!
However, while that metadata was good, I noticed that I was missing artwork for a lot of the music files. It so happens that artwork was present in the iTunes Store purchased music, and in the files that had the artwork embedded via drag and drop (i.e., art was part of actual song file). On the other hand, every file that originally had images via Get Album Artwork was not referencing the Album Artwork folder (i.e., art not part of actual song file but referenced .itc files). So, no artwork.
How do I get that artwork back? All the images are still in the Album Artwork folder, restored from my backup, but I cannot find a way to make itunes reference them again! Why does the Library.xml restore all the iTunes-specific information for a track except the artwork?
Why do I not just use the Get Album Artwork feature again, you may be thinking? Because for most of the songs iTunes had the ID3 tag info wrong. After importing the music and matching the track names to iTunes Store to grab the artwork, I modified the ID3 info to more correctly reflect the artist, album, and track names. To rename the files to match iTunes Store, and then name them back to how I like them will take days.
So.. am I out of luck? Is there a way to actually backup iTunes information so that songs keep their references to the .itc files in the Album Artwork folder?
I thank you for your time reading this.
cheers!

2 words - Migration Assistant. Worked wonders.

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Restored iTunes Library from backup, but Missing Artwork

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