Can't find my iTunes music library anymore

I just had the memory increased at the local Apple store. Unfortunately, one complication arising from that--I hope the last one--is that I have lost my iTunes music library. The computer screen gave me two choices (1) select a file and click on it (2) Install new music library.
I started with the first choice; however, none of the choices I made--all having to do with music, or iTunes, or both--were acceptable to the computer. I then tried the option of starting a new library, but that led me nowhere
How do I get my music back?

Zevoneer wrote:
Try holding down the Option key when opening iTunes. In the resulting dialogue you will get the option to create a new library or navigate to an existing one. The default location for your iTunes library is in User/Music/iTunes. Look in there and see if you have more than one library file. If you have more than one try opening them in turn, you may find your original library is still intact: How to open an alternate iTunes Library file
That worked--I think. By this I mean that I don't know if my library is now complete. I say this because I saw two or there libraries in the section you sent me to, and I'm now wondering what those other libraries contain, and how to consolidate all libraries into one should that be necessary.
I tried to get back there to check out all the libraries, but that OPTION KEY method didn't help this time. This time, all that happened was that an iTunes music library opened. Whether or not it contains all of my songs, I don't know.

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Her problem is that she has deleted certain songs from her 'Jane Doe's iPod Playlist' so that she didn't have those songs on her iPod - I don't know the method she used to do this, nor does she. However, it has resulted in those songs now not showing up in the iTunes music library on her computer. There's just an exclamation mark and a dialog box asking if she would like to locate the songs.
If you're seeing the , that's generally an indication that media files (the mp3 or m4a, etc., files) were moved using Finder. They were moved or removed and the iTunes library wasn't able to keep track of where they went. If this is an old machine that she's messed around with, it can be a bit of a crap shoot trying to figure out where the stuff should go (iTunes is quite unhelpful in telling you where the music for the broken links was expected to be ... you can take some guesses, but iTunes 9 and iTunes 8 use different folder structures, so getting the stuff in the right place can be a nuisance).
Is it possible to select all the albums in this 'iTUnes Music old' folder and simply drag and drop it onto the iTunes Music folder (after making sure that the location I'm dragging and dropping to corresponds to the location for her library as specified on the advanced tab of preferences) so that the songs will be back in the default library?
Surprisingly complicated question. If you were confident of where the music files should go, you could try moving them (safer, copy them) to your current iTunes media folder and if you drop them in the exact same spot they were before, your broken links problem will be solved. It's a long shot, though.
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Once iTunes is done copying music to the new media folder and has rebuilt the new library, you can clean up the old music media files that it sounds like are scattered about on her machine.
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It's kind of hard to lose the music unless you do something nuts like drag stuff to the trash without making sure you've got a copy/backup somewhere. In fact, go ahead and have her back up her machine before you start. And when you're all done, and you've confirmed that everything is great, do another backup.
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Unless her version of iTunes is archaic (v7 or earlier), I'd suggest fixing her library first, and then doing the upgrade. Let's not add variables to the situation. Also, I don't know what the iTunes upgrade process would do with the broken links in her existing library.
Frankly, there are enough bugs/problems with 9.1, you might want to wait until 9.1.1 comes out anyway. I personally regret doing the 9.1 upgrade. It works, but I'm working around various bugs. And some people are having very serious problems. If you absolutely need 9.1 (e.g., iPad), you can do it and you'll probably be fine. But unless you need 9.1 for some reason, I'd wait for 9.1.1 release.

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