Like always, it all depends on our needs and habits
.
In my case, the merge was less challenging than in yours, and it made much more sense. I haven't really used virtual libraries before the merge (of course, I did experiment with them, but nothing would really stick) and even now I have a total of 8 views
. The biggest problem was probably the number of custom columns (almost 30 in total, and half of them in one library only) but using a tweak, I've managed to order them in a convenient way in the Edit Metadata dialog. Plus, now with Job Spy I can switch between 'views' in the Edit Metadata dialog, if I have some more editing work.
@BetterRed, what are the specific roles of your 'subsidiary' libraries? (I can guess but I'm not quite sure about the differences between them.) And what do you have in your Media library?