Great, I lost another long post because my IE *@#!ed up again.
Summarized repost:
The pages were made in Microsoft Word back in 2002 (I didn't want to mess with coding). Then I switched to Microsoft FrontPage which allowed my flexibility with the coding but also inserted a lot of unnecessary code. Despite a "revamp" in 2006 - which was mostly just a redesigned front page and a palette swap from black to white - the atlas pages haven't truly changed much since. Sure, there have been minor tweaks, but nothing I'd call an overhaul. I guess the tables made sense when I only had a few maps on each page to begin with but maybe not now when we've got over 12000 and the biggest sections have 2000+ maps each.
For the possible revamp that keeps on coming up in discussion, the atlas structure is pretty much the main concern as to why we should even have a revamp. So if and when I get to that, expect something more dynamic and efficient, ie. only pulling up the requested information.