IPhoto Duplication Nightmare - What???

Hello:
I just got a new iMac and am stunned at how much chaos has gone on with this. (Upgrading from Tiger)....  Migration assistant does not work with Tiger (as it was promised) so I've now spent an entire week (with 3 nights not going to bed) having to try and manually re-create everything...over 100 mail boxes and tens of thousands of emails that imported lost all my safari & firefox stuff and now this.
Today I've spent 15 hours fooling with iPhoto.  What should be a simple drag and drop or "import Library" has created over 5,000 duplicated images.  And for some insane reason MLion doesn't let you see "Rolls" or any kind of list so I can easily see the duplicates, but I am forced to scroll thru thousands of images all out of sequence and un-sortable because they all have the same "date" (import) and they don't have titles - they have ROLL NUMBERS.....
For God sake!  If I try and look at the libary file, it only shows "library" unlike Tiger where I could actually drill into the files and see what the heck is going on!
Can someone please help me understand how on earth we are supposed to see and organize our photos if we have to turn them into magic "events"?  I have no idea why there are a zillion duplicates.  I had these all organized in Tiger in folders....
Is there any way to see these duplicates and delete them without having to go one at a time?  I want to see a list, not tons of big images.... I have carpal tunnel from this already... LOL!
Thanks....
Exhausted....

Hi Terence:
Thanks for your response.   I finally found what I was looking for in the new Mac files, yet alas the naming convention was still numerical in nested folders named by the date (import date).  I ended up completing the job manually photo by photo as I was already halfway done when I first posted and didn't want to risk following Larry's directions (as they were basically the same as what I did to start with) and end up having to start all over again.
For the record though, in case anyone else like me is out there encounter a similar issue and was on an old version of Tiger, you are incorrect that we could never directly access the iPhoto library.  I am looking at it easy peasy in my old Mac as I type.
And there they all are listed nicely
Finder: Users: (name of User): Documents: iPhoto Library: Modified or Originals: 2000-2012 (one for each year of import):Roll #s (all your rolls): photo jpgs by number or name.
Your final sentence basically explained it all.  As it happens, I got my last Mac in July of 2007 and have always been able to see the hard drive & its files etc in Finder.
Coming into a brand new system where it was promised that magical one button migration assistant would do all of this and load my email, browser, photos, and everything else in my computer is only for people who have a computer that is less than 4-5 years old (LOL)... eons I realize to kids and computer geeks who routinely get new equipment, but not to the rest of us who don't. 
I believe when you are able to use Migration Assistant, it will indeed likely keep all your naming conventions, etc.  When you can't, the computer sees it simply as a new import of data and creates new names & time stamps.
As for the "User Tip", if you mean Larry's directions, finding a "Library" to drag is not readily seen
The Finder window in the new computer only shows this (of which Library or Users are no where):
All My Files
Air Drop
Applications
Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Movies
Music
Pictures
Shared:
Time Capsule
Devices:
Remote Disc
I had to figure out to:  View"Show Status Bar"
and then at the bottom double click that Users icon to access that to navigate inside folders.  Even then, the folder he's talking about is not in "Library" which would confuse a lot of people.  It's in Users.  And if you wish to see your files the only way to do that was to actually search for the name of a JPG to find where it was nested.  For me this was made tougher because my old computer was connected to the new one for the migration.... which could also lead to someone not realizing that the Library they're "finding" is not the one to be throwing away.
Anyway, Thanks for your kind response and the opportunity to memorialize this for any other soul experiencing what I am.
Blessings...

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