Yesterday iTunes worked - today, it acts like it's newly installed (won't show any of my music or playlists) - what could have made it forget everything it knew yesterday and how can I fix it without having to redo all my previous work?

The title says it all.  iTunes was working fine last night.  I added some more music to my playlists and synched my iPod last night, then shut down.  Today, when I start iTunes it opens up a welcome to setup screen and acts like it wants me to answer questions to configure it for the first time.  When I cancel out of that, it opens up a normal iTunes screen that's completely empty of music and has none of my custom playlists (all the playlists it does show are empty) and it's asking me if I want to have it search my PC and add media files, as if it's newly installed and that's never been done.
Has anybody seen this behavior before, and is there some simple way I can fix it so it remembers all the stuff it knew last night, without having to start all over again and rebuild all my playlists and stuff?

For general library squiffiness following an upgrade the easiest thing is to restore your last backup, but I guess if it were that simple you wouldn't be here.
Empty/corrupt library after upgrade/crash
Hopefully it's not been too long since you last upgraded iTunes, in fact if you get an empty/incomplete library immediately after upgrading then with the following steps you shouldn't lose a thing or need to do any further housekeeping. In the Previous iTunes Libraries folder should be a number of dated iTunes Library files. Take the most recent of these and copy it into the iTunes folder. Rename iTunes Library.itl as iTunes Library (Corrupt).itl and then rename the restored file as iTunes Library.itl. Start iTunes. Should all be good, bar any recent additions to or deletions from your library.
See iTunes Folder Watch for a tool to catch up with any changes since the backup file was created.
When you get it all working make a backup!
tt2

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