Edge loops were a new feature in 2.4, but I’m unable to find any documentation on how to use them. I’ve seen some references to them in some tutorials, but not a complete overview. I’m trying to follow the video tutorial on face modeling with the adrianna face reference. Some of the steps don’t make sense if you don’t know about edge loops. Can someone point me in the right direction? Thanks,
David
edge loops have been around earlier than 2.4
I’m not really sure if there’s much documentation about edge loops, but to start off with, [Ctrl] + [R] makes an edge loop, [Alt] + [RMB] selects an edgeloop and selecting an edgeloop -> pressing delete and clicking “edge loop” deletes an edge loop
I have not looked at the tutorial, but the confusion might be that some of the older documentation says to use ALT-B to select and edge loop. Somehow in the progress of newer blender versions that go changed to a border selection.
I think studying the following manual page will help you a lot with edge (and other) loops 
Werner