Digital BW, The Print

I'm in a similar situation having to sort through thousands of old 
BW negs from medium format through 5x7 negs. There were very few 
contact sheets and prints and one of the biggest problems was just 
viewing the images to sort them according to content and quality.

The fastest way I found was just to lay the negs on a light table 
and photograph them with a digital camera. In Photoshop I set up a 
batch that inverted the files and applied auto levels. The results 
were surprisingly good. Sure I wouldn't print off them, but for the 
initial sorting they were more than adequate.

You could also use a fast scanner for this purpose, but I think the 
camera saved a lot of time.