I do click on the number behind the dial and it works fine (entering values is the main way to pose stuff for me too).

As for the library taking more and more time to load, this is definitely not normal. Mine is still as fast as the first day (and I bought PP2014 on release). What mine does though since half a year, and didn't do in the beginning, is "forget" parts of my runtime during a work session (folders or folder groups) and having to take a couple seconds to refresh itself and display the thumbnails. Happens when changing from Characters to Poses for instance. It's a minor annoyance. As for your library problem, I think you should run a check of your hard drive ASAP, and if it hasn't any problems contact SM support, for obviously something is slowly failing, and one can only hope the final stage doesn't imply having lost your whole runtime!