Generating Nav menu for pagination

I have 30 container folders corresponding to volumes of our magazine, by year. Each contains pages for each issue of the magazine. I want to display 3 or 4 volumes per page that shows a thumbnail of each magazine cover. I currently do this using a ditto call that calls the container folders, and within the template for each folder I have another ditto call for the issues. This allows me to wrap each volume and issue in divs that give me a lot of styling flexibility.

Using the pagination feature of ditto allows me to break up the pages into 3 or 4 volume ranges, but now I want to make a more useful navigation menu like this:

2008–2006 | 2005–2003 | 2002-2000 | ...

I just can’t see how to do this.

I could create separate pages for each range, but that seems like it would require more maintainence.

What I want is a single, self-maintaining solution to this navigation feature, so that the navigation ranges are generated automatically, and correctly link to the appropriate content. I’m just having a hard time wrapping my brain around how to do it.

Ideas?