I've wanted to know how to be able to access the iPods library without touching iTunes myself. My pc went belly up a few weeks ago and I thought I'd lost the iTunes library completely and wanted to be able to copy what I had on the iPod back to iTunes rather than reloading everything. As it turns out, thankfully my library was still there.
Anyway, I've been googling and it seems to be fairly impossible to access the iPod through iTunes without it synchronising, but I've come across this bit of software that allows you access to the iPod to copy what's on there back on to your pc. There's a free trial period, so it might be worth a go just to get those tracks back.
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/copygear.php
Let us know how you get on.