My question:
So can you delete the Catalog that is on your desktop?

If I were to write Adobe with a suggestion for improvement I would say something like:

An improvement to Lightroom would be to allow multiple catalogs to be created just as it does now, but allow the filmstrip (and grid view in the Library) to show images from any of the availbale catalogs. It would work something like this: You open a default catalog to work with (as you do now). When you want to filter images based on the multitude of filter criteria available, such as keywords, you could specify to search within the current catalog only or specify any or all of the other available catalogs. That would be awesome because then you could take full advantage of keywording.

Multiple catalogs defeats the purpose of keywording – not entirely, but to some degree. My intent for now is to stick with one large catalog until such time it is creating problems for me.

But I have another question.

I have folders for each year that I have been shooting, in one large catalog. I wantt o break them up by year without losing the keywords, ratings and flags I have now. So, if I were to export the “2004″ folder as a catalog, and then open that “2004″ catalog in Lightroom, will that work?

Will it act the exact same way as it did when it was a folder in my larger, overloaded catalog?

The easiest way I found out was to create a new catalog (e.g 2008 catalog), then to import the old catalog into it, and then to delete the folders of previous years. Then to optimize the catalog and up you go. This way it seems like the fastest way to import data from a large catalog, rather than going through hundreds of folders indivudually to add.