Hello,
I've been in an even worse condition, as my iPod Touch was stuck at the "Apple logo" stage and all sort of errors would appear when either synching or attempting a "restore".
I was a bit worried about the answer above my message because it implied restarting from a blank library. Luckily I've found that document
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1808 provides a better solution. Basically it is sufficient to hold the Home button down in order to start the reset procedure, and if you have an existing iPod backup, which I luckily had, all the iPod contents are restored while preserving the current library content.
In other words, the solution is the one mentioned in the previous message but with no need to create a new library in iTunes. If you do not have any backup available, I believe the iPod would start from an empty state but then you could feed it again through your usual iTunes library.
HTH.
Best regards,
Giovanni