At some point during my decade-long stint in a public library (now, already over a decade ago), we were affected by a trend in the commercial/business community that was making the rounds at the time (and may be still for all I know). In this particular case, the model with which we were presented had to do with job titles. Our director had been influenced by an inspirational/motivational speaker who had managed to convey something that convinced her that she should do away with static job titles and replace them with a sort of "commitment title," and that by doing so, it would improve customer service by empowering employees to meet service expectations commensurate with the title to which the employee had committed.
Taking this into account, and being the more or less smart ass that I was (and to some degree, still am), I decided to adopt the job title, "Master of all I survey." I can't remember the initial audience, but it got a good laugh all the same over time as it was bandied about (until this title fad had died out). Now, having put aside certain aspects of the foolishness of my youth, I no longer consider myself master of anything. Even less, having recently dropped out of a graduate program in philosophy, and consequently would now argue that no one is ever actually a master of any discipline. So, for this blog, the term "master" was easy to drop (on a number of levels). I thought the remainder of the title was still interesting though (and catchy as well), so I kept it for a title nonetheless.
Furthermore, in order to justify the remaining title, I initially set a background image of a painting my wife and I had been given by my aunt and uncle. Because of its size (roughly 4'x5'), they always lovingly referred to it as "the big picture" and when faced with a difficulty, would stand in front of it, staring resolutely--an activity which came to be known as "having a look at the big picture" (they found this little comic relief to be useful in grave situations, and I'm sure the Bard would agree). Unfortunately, I could not get the image to format in a way with which I could be satisfied, so I replaced it with one of the "stock" blogger backgrounds (namely the book spines you see now). I couldn't master a background image; what is my world coming to? Time to look at the big picture, I suppose.
I don't consider myself the master of these books either (or any books, for that matter), but since I do work with them intimately, (and own more than a reasonable person probably ought to), it seemed like a relevant image to accompany the title, "…of all I survey" which should be generally taken to mean that I view, handle, and well, "deal with" many books on a regular basis, and that would be entirely accurate. So that's the story of this blog title, and I'm sticking with it.
