Adding a bit of clarification to the Question above: your comment in another answer included this:

How can I create a set of thumbnails for a given folder, without having to to build a full preview, and without having to tediously scroll though the folder, waiting for each page to load? Does such a function exist in Lightroom?

Lightroom does not need the previews, they are provided for you. If building the previews are taking a long time, you might simply need to adjust what previews Lightroom builds, and when.

The key is setting this via the Import dialog. It looks like this, and pops up when you do an import of photos:

It is important to remember that the Import dialog simply repeats what you did last time, so be sure to change this here, and it will repeat this choice in future imports.

When importing the image, be sure to select 'Minimal' under "Build Previews". This will basically grab the JPEG image embedded, or create a very small preview image. You can then sort thru the images with the Library module.

Later you can ask Lightroom to build Previews. To do this, simply go to the menu and select Library>Previews>Build... and choose the previews you wish Lightroom to build for you.