I'm not sure I followed the dual library structure. How does the new library affect your old? Does Aperture open into the new library by default or you old library with all you non-ebay photos? And how do you switch between the 2?

Thanks for clarifying.

@ Matt - When you open Aperture, hold the alt-button and you'll be able to choose a library. You can also go to preferences in Aperture and select the library and restart Aperture. Oh yeah if I'm correct Aperture opens the last library you used.

What Armando said.

Aperture will default to using the last Library that you opened, you can swap between Libraries via preferences, holding down Alt/Option on launch or simply by clicking on the relevant Library in the Finder.

Aperture Assistant also has a menu item which will automatically search for all Libraries on your computer and swap between them, but normally that's overkill...

Ian

I run with two libs, on on the laptop hd, another on an external hd. I find the easiest way to choose which library to run with is to just double clik on the library in the finder.

On a related note, it would be nice if Aperture could export multiple projects in one operation, in the same manner as it can import multiple projects in one operation. That, or some other method for moving lots of objects between libraries...

I use two library for very different context and I use two users, each one with his own library and keywords

Is this similar to what you do when using your laptop in the field? Save all the images taken in field to one library on the laptop's hdd then export the projects when you get back to the studio and then reimport them back into the ext. hdd's library?

i've been racking my brain over this problem for ages.

When working with more than one library, how do you update the vaults for back up??

@Marc

What I end up doing is keeping a Aperture Library of stuff I want with me on my laptop and I use Super Duper! religiously to back the whole thing up. This negates the need for a vault for my laptop library.

External Drive has everything else and another drive for a vault. I was using two disks until the second one recently became to small to hold everything.

I don't export the project - just Open package contents and drag/drop the project into the other Aperture Library. I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not, but it works (I haven't noticed any issues with it).

Remember, its a mac. You can simply select the project and drag it do the desktop in stead of going thru the whole file/export/etc....

Do you give the different libraries different names?

Wow. My questions answered before I even asked them. Great thread folks. Now I'm just wishing I'd gotten that librarian degree rather than the photography one I ended up with. ;-)