Condensing and organizing iPhoto library

I'm trying to figure out the best way to condense and organize my pictures that are stored both an internal and external hard drive. I've been reading some different posts and articles to figure out what to do but am still not sure.
I recently just started to keep closer track of the photos on my internal hd by changing their titles, assigning keywords, etc. and want to do that with my photos that are on my external as well. I don't have the hard drive space to import all of these pics back in to iPhoto but thought I could do this is in batches. Once I've imported and organized these as I'd like what's the best way to move these batches back to the hard drive?
I get confused with whether I should just drag the images straight out of iPhoto, drag from the data/original/modified folders (in the iPhoto library) or do I just copy the entire iPhoto library on to the hard drive each time? Would I simply copy over the older version each time I do this? Also if I've read correctly I should be able to choose which library I want to operate from upon start up of iPhoto.....so I could switch back an forth between my older and newer images? Hope this makes sense and thanks for any responses.

Welcome to the Apple Discussions.
As you are using iPhoto 6 it’s very easy to simply have 2 Libraries, one on your internal, one on your external drive:
Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library' to make a second Library on your external.
Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' will allow you to choose which Library to open too.
As you are still using iPhoto 6 keywords added to Photos are not maintained outside of an iPhoto Library. (If you upgrade to a later version you can do this)
drag from the data/original/modified folders (in the iPhoto library)
Never, ever. Don't change anything in the iPhoto Library Folder via the Finder or any other application. iPhoto depends on the structure as well as the contents of this folder. Moving things, renaming things or otherwise making changes will prevent iPhoto from working and could even cause you to damage or lose your photos.
Managing Multiple Libraries - including moving pics/albums/rolls and metadata between them - is greatly facilitated by using iPhoto Library Manager
Regards
TD

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