ITunes can't connect to shared library UNLESS it's manually connected?

Question

this is a problem i've been monkeying with off and on for nearly a year now, but haven't ever found a solution for.
What I am specifically looking for is a way to connect to a shared library on my local network but do so without having to physically click the library to connect it. Everything that I've found has worked after the library has been connected, but I can't find a solution that actually connects to the library.
I've asked doug at doug's applescripts for help... he had no answer.
i've asked hanaan rosenthal (author of a few applescript books) for help.. he had no answer.
i've posted a few times on macscripter.net ( http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=35511 ) ... nobody had an answer.
i've dug around the apple discussion boards (http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2324452) and found similar questions, but there were no satisfactory answers...
both of the following scripts work when the library is already connected but fail when it's not... how can i get it to work every time...
activate application "iTunes"
tell application "System Events"
tell process "iTunes"
get the value of static text 1 of row 17 of outline 1 of scroll area 2 of window 1
end tell
end tell
tell application "iTunes"
activate
repeat with theSource in every source
if name of theSource as text is "MY SHARED LIBRARY" then
set theLibrary to user playlist "MY SHARED PLAYLIST" of theSource
end if
end repeat
tell theLibrary
set shuffle to true
set song repeat to all
end tell
play some track of theLibrary
end tell
any help would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

this new format has erased my response twice now and is kinda ******* me off. grrrr.
the gist of my previous two posts (they were much better explained/phrased).
THANK you very much.  you very quickly answered a question that I had spent a fair amount of time looking for an answer to.
the code worked beautifully when i ran it by itself, but when i paired it with the rest of the code i wrote for this little project my follow up code never executed...   i'm not sure if this is because of something in the handler/subroutine code or because the whole thing runs as an Automator application.
the edited code isn't as elegant, but it does the job I needed it to.  Thank you very much for that.
tell application "iTunes"
  activate
          set sound volume to 100
          tell front browser window to if minimized then set minimized to false
          tell application "System Events" to tell scroll area 2 of window 1 of process "iTunes"
                    tell (first row of outline 1 whose value of it's static text 1 is "MY SHARED LIBRARY")
                              set b to exists
                              if b then select -- connect
                              delay 2
                    end tell
          end tell
          tell source "MY SHARED LIBRARY" to if exists then
                    tell user playlist "MY SHARED PLAYLIST" to if exists then
                              set shuffle to true
                              set song repeat to all
                              play some track
                    end if
          end if
end tell