Can I save selected elements of a Blender scene? Hypothetically, I've just created the greatest Blender scene of all time, and there are thirty-seven meshes spread across twenty two objects that I know I want to archive in my personal library of really, really useful sub-objects. Now, I know I can save the scene, open a new instance of Blender, and append those sub-objects into a new blend file. But it would be faster and more efficient if I could just select the items I want, and save them to a new Blender file, without having all of the other parts of the retinue included. 

I haven't found such capability. Is it not there, or did I just not look hard enough to find how to use it?
What may help you most is creating a "library.blend" file. Get rid of the default cube and lamp, and organize per layer characters, abstracts, etc. Then append from that file only, this is the only method I'm aware of, and much more efficient than keeping track of which model is in which .blend.