ipod Touch sync after many years not used

I have an iPod Touch 3rd Gen (32Gb) purchased July ’11 with about 2,500 songs on it.  About 98% of the songs on it were my own CD’s that I transferred to iTunes via a Dell Laptop I owned.  I quite often would Sync iPod with my iTunes Library including buying songs via the Apple account.  Everything worked perfectly, no complaints. 

Well, I went through a period of time where several Dell Laptops went bad for some reason or another

and to make matters worse, the guy I used to try and transfer my iTunes Library to the new Laptop didn’t know what he was doing.  He was trying to copy my music from my bad Laptops Hard Drive and enter it into iTunes, if I’m even remembering this correctly.  In any event, it resulted in 2, 3, 4 versions/copies of the same songs. I didn’t trust, what he was doing and thought it be best my NOT hooking up my iPod to my Laptops and Sync into a crazy mess that the guy created. I know the songs/playlists are fine on the iPod.

My situation now is, I had an original Apple ID that I have changed several times since 2011 due to medical issues and memory loss.  I know that I have NOT tried to create a new iTunes account and connect (Sync) my iPod to my present Laptop(s) in about 5 years!!  I do not have iTunes loaded on my current Laptop, but I want to get back to using iTunes, etc. I’m afraid not knowing what to

properly do will mess up my iTunes Library in my iPod.  Also, I don’t know what impact my having had

several Apple ID’s may cause. 

When I go to Settings, General, About, it shows: 2359 songs; 98 Photos; Applications 4; Capacity 28.4Gb; Version 5.1.1 (9B206); Model MC008LL; Ser #; Wifi Address …; Bluetooth ….;

Where do I go from here, please help.  BTW, I think the iTunes version I was using back then was 8.1 ???  It was easy and met my needs. Thanks, JG USMC