Where Is The iPhoto Albums Directory Stored?

It won't do you much good to back up only a portion of the library. Your best bet is to back up the entire library as an entity.

Hi Paul,
There is no album directory/folder. All the album info is stored in a data file that only has info of the album names and pointers to the actual photo files.
Here is all the info you need to backup your iPhoto Library folder. This folder contains all the info and files for your working iPhoto Library.
Backing up your iPhoto Library
1. Burn the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder to a CD or DVD
This method will give you a burned iPhoto Library folder that can be copied back to your computer to replace a damaged library. You can also use this method to backup an old library when you want to create a new Library to use as your current library.
insert a blank CD into your internal or external CD-RW drive and copy the iPhoto library to the CD icon on your desktop. When you drag the CD icon to the Trash/Eject button in the Dock, you are given the option to burn the CD. Click Burn and the CD is created. To burn a DVD backup of your digital images, use a DVD and a SuperDrive-equipped Mac

The easiest way to burn an iPhoto Library folder in the Finder that is larger than 4.7 gig to fit on one DVD is to burn sections of the folder.

Drag the iPhoto Library folder to the desktop
Double click the folder to open it.
Drag each Year folder to the desktop.
You should be left with the iPhoto Library folder containing all the data files, and the Year folders.

Combine whatever year folders that amount closest to a DVD burn size on one DVD. Make sure that you have burned all the Year folders, then the iPhoto Library folder with all the data files.
If you ever need to use this backup, insert the DVDs into your computer and copy the folders to the desktop. Put all the Year folders back into the iPhoto Library folder. Then put the iPhoto Library folder back into the Pictures folder.
You can also check out applications for disc spanning:

Disc-spanning software
DropDMG
Toast
Dragon Burn 4
BackityMac
Retrospect Express-comes with some external drives
Retrospect for Macintosh Desktop Edition

2. Copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library to an external drive formated for a Mac. Do not use this as your only back up as the external can also go bad.
3. Copy the ENTIRE iPhoto Library to your iPod in disk mode
4.Creating your own CDs and DVDs for viewing in iPhoto
This method is a great way to back up Albums of older photos or even your entire library if it is small enough to fit on a DVD. This method will give you a library that will mount within iPhoto in the source column to be viewed. To import any images from this library they need to be dragged into your library in the source column.

If you just want to backup the images in your library:
1) Within iPhoto select the images, albums or rolls you want to backup. Go to Share>Export and export them to a newly created folder on the desktop. Follow the directions in the next link.

Creating a CD or DVD to be viewed in Windows or by a photo processing company

1.. If you backed up the entire iPhoto Library by burning within iPhoto or burning the folder in the Finder, make sure the burned copy is a good working copy before you delete the iPhoto Library folder in the Finder. You delete the iPhoto Library in the finder by dragging it to the trash when iPhoto is closed. When you next launch iPhoto it will create a new empty library for you to start anew.
2. If you burned just the images, be aware that that is all you are archiving. No metadata will travel with the images such as comments, keywords, etc.
You can then delete those images within iPhoto by highlighting them and hitting the delete key, then empty iPhoto's trash. Do this often and in groups so iPhoto will not choke on too many images.
For iTunes backup, you would do the same thing for the iTunes folder that is in your Music folder. Make sure your library is consolidated first.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302392
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesMac/7.0/en/702x.html
And finally, here is info on moving the iTunes library to an external for backup (especially good for very large libraries)
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301748