Umbrella. A strange name for a conference, until you realise that the last two letters are the intials of the Library Association, which used to run the event before it merged with the Institute of Information Professionals, to form CILIP.

The conference and exhibition is to be held at the University of Hatfield - a reasonably quick train ride from London - from 28th to 30th June. If you can go for only one day, Friday probably offers the best value in terms of the number of activities and the likelihood of meeting up with like-minded professionals.

The conference programme is split into nine streams: Workforce Development; Leadership/Management; Customers/clients; e-Content; Law/ethics; Communication; Research and evidence based practice; Information literacy; and Technology. Detailed proceedings are available as a pdf file.

Prices for the event itself start at £94 for the short days. Overnight accommodation is on campus and represents good value for money at £39 for bed and breakfast. Social events, both formal and informal have been arranged around the main exhibition and conference.

CILIP, naturally, is very excited about the event. It reckons it will be the biggest Umbrella yet although records show that, in terms of visitors, the 2001 event was about 30 percent bigger than this year's expected 1,000 delegates. Perhaps 'biggest' refers to the exhibit area.

John Woolley, the managing director of CILIP Enterprises has bravely started a blog in order to kick start some conversations. If you want to put in your two penn'orth, it seems you'll have to register  before your contributions will be published.

See you there on the Friday.