That's quite odd. I've noticed that every other photographer I know dislikes Lightroom for the very fact that it uses libraries -- ending up being way too bulky

That's quite odd. I've noticed that every other photographer I know dislikes Lightroom for the very fact that it uses libraries -- ending up being way too bulky and a resource hog when scaling across cameras, editing machines, studio locations, and storage drives. Phase One's Capture One solves this by using "sessions" instead, which lets you keep any sort of workspace as a loose individual folder; with preset subfolders for raw files, output, trash, previews, etc. You still get the benefits of tagging and other bells and whistles of searchable libraries but with much easier grouping and portability. While this really doesn't apply to casual editing, I think the performance benefits and flexibility of the session approach over LR's insistence on libraries cannot be overstated if your RAW files start to number in the thousands after a few months (event/wedding photographers, etc.).