How do I archive certain albums in iPhoto?

Hi,
I am using a Macbook Intel core 2 duo, so it's a few years old now and my iPhoto '11 is running incredibly slow. I have over 12,000 photo's in the library so what I want to do is archive most of these photo's and get them out of iPhoto. I plan on putting them into an external hard drive.
I'm not sure if what I am asking is possible or not, but I have all my photo's in albums down the left hand side of the app, I want to be able to pick certain albums and archive them, taking the photo out of the library at the same time. I want this because ideally I'd like the photo's to stay in the albums I have put them in, not just archive 10,000 photo's in one big folder where I will never be able to search through them if I need to find a particular album in the future (so it needs to remain searchable on the external HD).
I have albums/photo's dating back 10 years and I'm looking to archive all the photo's that are older than 2 years or so, so I can keep my recent pics inside iPhoto but clearing out all the old stuff.
Please can someone help?

With 2gigs of Ram you're never going to have a fast machine as that's the bare minimum for 10.8, not to mind adding apps to it. You could thinnk of increasing the Ram for a start.
So if I just copy my current library by dragging and dropping it on the external, that'll literally copy it as it is. Then go through iPhoto on my computer deleting and sorting everything out as it is, then in the future if I want an old photo from the original library I can simply plug the external in, start the iPhoto app, but start it with the option key and select the library from the external, resulting in the original library opening up?
Yes.
Can I just quit iPhoto and then start it back up again with the 'new' library?
Hold down the option (or alt) key key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library'
If I just copy that one 'iPhoto Library' icon in the 'Pictures', I assume it'll copy over all the original pictures aswell, so once I delete them from my computer after I've copied it to my external I won't lose the original photos. I.E it's not just copying links or thumbnails of the photos, it's moving over the picture itself?
Yes. if you have a default Managed Library:
Are you running a Managed or a Referenced Library?
A Managed Library, is the default setting, and iPhoto copies files into the iPhoto Library when Importing. The files are then stored in the Library package
A Referenced Library is when iPhoto is NOT copying the files into the iPhoto Library when importing because you made a change at iPhoto -> Preferences -> Advanced. (You unchecked the option to copy files into the Library on import) The files are then stored where ever you put them and not in the Library package. In this scenario you are responsible for the File Management. 

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