What you’ll end up doing is creating a small script for each of the libraries you’ll want to access. Here’s the script for the Music library:

tell application "iTunes"
	try
		set view of front browser window to (get some playlist whose special kind is Music)
	end try
end tell

Some might suggest using this syntax instead:

		set view of front browser window to playlist "Music"

That’s fine, too. I just prefer using special kind to avoid any ambiguity. Save that as “select_music.scpt” in your ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder so it will appear in the iTunes Script menu. Now, assign the script a “Command-1″ keyboard shortcut.

I think you can see where this is going. You’ll create a “select-movies.scpt” and assign it “Command-2″, and so on. The special kind parameters for other libraries are Books, iTunes U, Movies, Podcasts, and TV Shows. For other libraries you may have to use the name parameter.

The workaround suggested in this Folder Actions and iTunes tip is no longer necessary in Snow Leopard.

In OS 10.5 and later you can target an app by its application id. I remember seeing that in the AppleScript Release Notes for 10.5 thinking “Hmm. Now how can I use that” and never really thought of anything. Until I needed to access QTP in both 10.5 and 10.6.

This tell block:

tell application id "com.apple.quicktimeplayer"
	-- do something in QuickTime Player
end tell

…will target “QuickTime Player” in OS 10.5 and “QuickTime Player 7″ in OS 10.6. The application id is the same for each, so it makes no difference what their names are. And the AppleScript architecture is virtually the same in both operating systems. (Remember that “QuickTime Player 7″ is an optional install either during installation or from the “Optional Installs” folder on your installation disc.)

“QuickTime Player X” is a drastically different version of the player app and scripts written for QTP7 will not play well with it. However, it is scriptable to a modest extent. Its application id is “com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX” in case you need to target QTPX specifically.

tell application "iTunes"
	set sel to selection
	repeat with aTrack in sel
		tell aTrack
			set played date to missing value
			set played count to 0
			-- and/or
			set skipped date to missing value
			set skipped count to 0
		end tell
	end repeat
end tell

I’ll have a look for any other changes.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool TRUE
defaults write com.apple.iTunes hide-library-playlist -bool FALSE

To hide the Library again, run the same commands, but reverse the TRUE/FALSE values.

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool TRUE

Quit iTunes before entering the command. When you restart you’ll have a new playlist named “Library” at the top of your Source list, above “Music”.

If you want to remove the “Library” again, use this command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes show-library-playlist -bool FALSE

There is a second preference called “hide-library-playlist”, which I at first thought would have to be set in tandem with the opposite of “show-library-playlist”, but this doesn’t seem necessary. In fact, you can set one or the other, apparently, and get the desired result; that is setting “show-library-playlist” to TRUE or setting “hide-library-playlist” to FALSE amounts to the same thing. Also, for AppleScript purposes, this playlist can be referenced as library playlist 1; it always could be, but now it is visible.