iphoto library unable to download

I recently reinstalled leopard, then updated to snow leopard on my macbook.

I saved my iphoto library on an external hard drive and am now experiencing problems putting my pictures back into iphoto.

First, I just dragged the iphoto library icon from my ext hard drive to iphoto. The photos were downloaded but there were a lot of double copies, pictures upside down, and events split incorrectly. So I googled and did some searching and found following discussion on apple.com.

Someone had answered to copy/paste iphoto icon onto the desktop, and then drag and drop the folders into iphoto (with the autosplit events disabled). THis would preserve my current events organization, etc.

When I attempted to copy iphoto library onto my desktop, I received the following error message:

The Finder can’t complete the operation because some data in “iPhoto Library” can’t be read or written.
(Error code -36)

Then, I tried to just open whatever was in that folder that appeared on my desktop and received another error message on iphoto.

Please give me any advice you have. I am just nervous about losing all of my photos.

THanks you in advance.