Newly imported pics are put into the Library so that reading from the top left is the reverse of the order they were taken ... is there a mass way to reverse this when putting large numbers into an album?

Can you rearrange them using explorer (or the Apple equivelant) so that ther are arranged by name? That's the quick fix, assuming it works. I'm not very experienced with Mac, although I used it along with Photoshop a few years back. Arranging the files by name seems as if that should fix your problems. If not, then you could rename the files (1,2,3,4 etc.) and then save them.....hopefully they'll save in alpha-numeric order which would leave them in the correct order.

Also, check the settings in the program that you're using (Apple Iphoto) to see if there's an "auto arrange" option (or something similar) that you can turn off.

Hope it helps!