Modify thumbs display in Slider Theme to include title/description (like Hybrid Theme) ?

Can anyone give us some pointers as to how to add a bit more info to Slider's thumbs area?

We're working on a low-budget charity 'media archive', still designing it locally on the computer (website not yet online). We basically want the thumbs area to look like Hybrid's thumb area (2 columns, Thumbnail + item title, + item summary/or description, +/- item keywords, other fields not necessary). We'd like to stick with the Slider theme as the foundation, since we need to have the image/media playback area always visible above the thumbs.

From a bit of digging, it seems that the slider.tpl will need a slight mod., plus maybe other .tpl and .inc files. We're comfortable with CSS mods ;-) but the other files are a bit impenetrable, so we're really stuck! Any tips much appreciated,

thanks
max
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Gallery 2.2.4 on Windows (local, using XAMPP).
Slider Theme for Gallery 2, Revision: 15342.