I also came across this tip and sort of like it. I may implement this for myself.
"Others keep a main library and then use a separate working library. When they are done with a project they will export it and import it into the main library which acts as more of an archive. This way they gain the extra performance of the small working library, but keep all the benefits (like searching) by having one large archive library."
I had all of mine split up into yearly libraries and that was such a hassle if I wanted to go back and poke around older pictures, or reference something (like, say, put together a birthday project for one of my kids and use pictures from their earlier years.) I haven't had significant performance issues *yet* after moving everything back into 1 file, and my library file's a bit over 100gb right now...
Just from a "process" perspective, in the past 3-4 years I've had to get really strict with myself to only keep the pictures I really want. I may take 60-120 pictures at one "event" (I've had some events like family vacations or sporting events approach the 800-1000 mark.) In the past, I'd mark and edit the ones I really liked, but wanted to keep ALL of them "just in case." That's resulted in a few past years' collections being unnecessarily large.
Now, the first thing I do is mark all the pictures I know I don't want with "9" which "X"es the picture out and removes it from my view. (Side tip: if you do this too, create a smart album to find all those pictures and delete them; marking them with the X doesn't delete them, just "hides" them. I mention this later.) After that I go through the remaining shots and rate them on a 1-5 star scale: 3's are maybe's, 4's are probably's, and 5's are definites.
From there I'll create a smart album off the project that only shows me anything starred 3 and higher. From there I'll start my post processing work. I'll use the color labels - yellow for maybes, greens for definites, blues for "99% sure I'm done with PP" and purples for "final" - to mark my process of post processing and my own "rating" of the image. Once I'm done with that, I'll modify the smart album to now only show me greens, blues, and purples. (I used to create another smart album, and that's an option, but recently realized it's a bit more streamlined to just modify the 1 smart album.)
Finally I'll do one last sweep of the greens and blues and do any tweaks needed, then change anything left to purple that I feel is finalized. I'll then flag any purples that I feel are truly "representative" of the photo shoot - if I had to pick 1-2 shots out of the entire thing, those are flagged.
At the end of each year I like to take the flags and some purples and compile an annual "photo album" of the year's pics and events. Doing the above rigamarole during the post processing really helps me compile the pictures for that annual album without having to go through *every* picture taken for the year.
I'll also usually keep anything marked green and above, and that satisfies my "just in case" OCD. I feel confident that I discarded images that didn't make the cut, and kept a margin of pics that I may see differently months from now.
FINALLY, I have some smart albums that pull all images with 2 stars and below, images with no ratings at all, and images that have been "9ed" so that I can delete them. It's easy to forget about them once they fall out of your album/smart album, but this way I keep it all relatively clean. Then I'll go delete the trash about once a quarter.
I also have a smart album that just shows me flagged images in a specific time range so I can watch that yearly photo album populate. Sometimes I'll realize that I have too many of a particular event or 2 images that are too similar to consider putting in a book. I've used MyPublisher (now Shutterfly) to make annual photo albums that are bound and professional; ideal I'd do it every year, but it doesn't work out that way. One day when I have copious amounts of extra money (ha!) I'll go back and have an album printed for every year I'm missing one. I'm a digital evangelist but there's something cool about having the pics printed in a book that can be taken out and looked at, shared, etc.
Edit: While I do use "vault" with an external drive for backing up the library, I also like to upload images to something cloud-based for redundancy. This isn't really practical with the entire library (unless you want to pay for a service), but just backing up the flagged "album" files to Picasa or something allows me to have a cloud-based backup of the most important images to someplace where I can also share the images with family and friends. (Picasa in particular is nice because you can upload high quality originals and re-download them later.)
Sorry for the length. Everyone has their own processes, but plenty of us tweak our processes by sharing with each other. I know I find better ways to do what I do by reading what you all do.
