All my music files that were in iTunes are gone!

Just opened iTunes for the first time in a few days and everything in my music library is gone.  I have hundreds of songs, talks, etc. stored there, a collection going back ten years.  I am using a MacBook Pro running the latest version of Mavericks, 10.9.2.  Something updated yesterday or the day before and it didn't tell me what it was.  Looking at the history of updates all I see is a security update in the past couple of days.  Did that do something to my Music library?
This is pretty serious as I can't replace some of the things that I had stored there.  I'm afraid to sync by iPhone or my iPad because the content they have will be wiped out.  I hope they are still stored on my computer.  I'll go look for the library now,  but wanted to get this out there in case there is a simple fix.
I read the past day of two of posts here and don't see anyone else with this problem.
Need some help please.

Well where is your library located now if not in the iTunes folder?  See the links below on what your iTunes folder should look like and put it back together:
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391
iTunes 9 [and later]: Understanding iTunes Media Organization - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3847

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