itunesmacmacosmusic
I have a huge iTunes collection and have been researching this for a while but cannot seem to find an answer.
Basically I would like to leave my iTunes collection open so that people can select their own songs. My only concern is that they might accidentally delete or change info in the tracks.
Is there any way that I could have a read-only (or play-only) toggle for my iTunes library on OS X?
No. Every field is part of the songs ID3 (or meta tag) and only one field can exist at any given time. A song can only have one track name, one genre, one composer, one album title, and so on:
Whether you set the name of the song, for example, to English, or some other language, it doesn't matter as it would require two distinct fields for one ID3 entry, and that is not supported in the metadata container.
This is not a limitation of iTunes, but of the songs container.
There is a 
shuffle button right beside the playlist name (at the top), when you have a playlist selected
In the above, my sidebar is off, (so I get this bar)
Songs Albums Artists Genres Playlists Radio Match iTunes Store
but this also works if a playlist is selected and the sidebar is on.
Best Answer
You can turn on Home Sharing in iTunes and allow other users to stream music from it to iOS devices or Apple TV and copy content to their own libraries. You can also prevent their playcounts from being updated in your library.
See Setting up Home Sharing on your computer for more information.