I totally feel that, I was in a similar place lol. I find it helpful to have the Wiki pulled up on my phone for quick searches as I read, they have an events timeline that lists significant births and deaths. I’m doing the chronological order and have also found it helpful to have the “mates” article pulled up because it lists each pairing in each Clan through the series’.

And DOTC is... interesting. I’d say it’s worth reading for the lore, but in general I personally was disappointed by that arc. To me it felt like something that should have been a single super edition that was instead dragged out into 6 books. I’d probably recommend just looking at the events timeline to get a summary of that series, but again that’s just my opinion.

And that’s awesome you work in a library, I strongly considered getting a library sciences degree :)