ITunes crashed...library is lost

iTunes (11.0.1) was not responding so I force quit it. When I went re-open it I got an 'unable to open...unknown error' message. I rebooted my computer and when I opened iTunes I got some sort of library error. I don't remember what it said. Now when I open iTunes it only shows about 10 albums (I've got about 60,000 songs on my external HD!)
Does anyone have a clue what's going on here? How can I get my library back?
Thanks very much in advance!
tr

anybody have any thoughts on this? ...any help is appreciated!

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I was quietly working away organising my itunes when itunes crashed while in the middle of syncing with my ipod! When I reopened itunes, it has deleted all playlists etc. and all that remains are the tracks bought from the itunes store and not added from CDs etc. My latest previous library file was over 3 months ago at the last update I presume and I've spent weeks sorting out my >150GB library since then! I still have all my music stored on an external hard drive (where it always was) but it's the loss of hundreds of playlists and play counts that is really bugging me.
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Help! How do I restore the past 11.5 months' worth of content to my iTunes library?
Well this is weird. Suddenly my iTunes library has lost everything added since late January 2014 - almost a year's worth of content. Podcasts, audiobooks, iTunes purchases, MP3s bought elsewhere and imported, movies, TV shows - all gone. Apps added in the past year also seem to be gone, although apps acquired before then have the most current update. As far as I can tell, all of that content is in the file directory structure - it's just not in the iTunes library system.
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Hm ... I guess I can't edit the post above. Anyway, I seem to have solved it by ...
Quitting iTunes.
Going into Home / Music / iTunes, and renaming the file "iTunes Library.itl" to "iTunes Library (corrupt).itl".
Entering Time Machine, and restoring the "iTunes Library.itl" file from a few days ago. I went back two days, which seemed far enough back to be "before" the problem but not far enough back to have trouble with recent acquisitions.
Re-opening iTunes - and everything seemed to be back in order.
So that's fine for now. We'll see if the solution is stable.
Very, very tentative assignment of blame: I believe iTunes crashed earlier today after I'd synced photos from my iPhone to iPhoto, and then iTunes crashed while iPhoto was closing (and taking its sweet time doing so). If that was indeed the case, that's at least the second time in the past couple of months that trying to sync iPhone photos to iPhoto has caused me significant problems. (The last time led to 80% of my iPhone suddenly being occupied by "Other", and a full restore of the darn thing.)

ITunes crashed...library is lost

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