I had a few top level collections - 1)Family 2) Trips 3) Photowalks etc…Inside these I had further collections based on event or time. Like under “Family” I had “2010 Kid’s 1st Birthday”, “2011 Kid’s 2nd Birthday” etc. One photo could be in multiple collections, like in “Family” and also in “Trips”.
Then I used a LR plugin to export all these as jpgs, making folders based on the collection hierarchy. Any changes could be easily updated with only the relevant files getting updated.
With all my jpgs organised into folders based on the collection, I did not need any DAM software. I just used faststone image viewer and browsed by folder.