I don't know what books you're reading but Shippey is correct. The only way to put music on an iPod is with a music manager. For the vast majority of people the simplest one to use is iTunes.
You can also look at this link to see if it any of the others meet your needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisonof_iPodManagers
I suspect that the easiest thing to do will be to transfer the music from your old player to your hard drive, add to iTunes and sync your Touch.
Best of luck.