Music disappeared out of library!  Help??

I turned on my computer a couple of days ago to listen to some music, only to find my itunes library completely empty! I have no idea how or why this happened, and was slightly panicked because I have thousands of songs (and was stupid enough not to have it all backed up). Luckily though, I found all the files are still on my computer. What can I do to move all the files back into itunes?? Your help is sooo appreciated!! Thanks! I will surely be backing up as soon as i get the music into itunes again.

DonnaH4,
Since your song files are still on your computer, your problem is not the same as NYC10014's who is trying to recover songs from an iPod.
In your case something seems to be amiss with your iTunes Library files which are needed for iTunes to know the contents of Music Library and where the files that make it up are located.
I'm going to offer two solutions from the Apple Knowledge Base. I don't think this first one will work but it might, so if it's alright with you I'd like you to take a couple of minutes to try it: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93313 .
If it works, case closed. If not, you can move on to the second solution which I think will work but with one drawback - it will not reflect any changes made to your library (new songs, ratings, last played dates, etc.) since the date on the file you're using from the Previous iTunes Libraries folder. But we can try dealing with that later if necessary. Here's the link: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301895 .
And I'll save the lecture on the importance of back-ups until later. ; - )

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