An umbrella title is a formal or informal name connecting a number of individual items with a common theme. It is most often used in lieu of listing separately the separate components or providing a convenient "label" for a collection of disciplines.
Nonspecific fields of study are identified by umbrella titles such as "physics", "physical education", and "medicine", to distinguish them from specialized fields of study such as exercise physiology.
Many scientific and academic conferences use umbrella titles as unifying themes for the activities scheduled in the course of the conference.
Umbrella titles in common use involve either general job descriptions of a group of workers with similar responsibilities (like "teacher") or rank (military or nonmilitary).
Collections of organizations with a common legal or legislative interest are often "united" under an umbrella title for the purposes of lobbying or participating in a lawsuit.
Umbrella titles are widely used in music, literature, television, and theater. Uses of umbrella titles vary widely in the arts, to a much greater spectrum of use than in other fields of study.
Umbrella titles are used to demarcate the music field into general trends or styles: classical music, jazz,rock music, hip hop, rhythm and blues and other labels which each cover more specialized musical styles. A similar "structure" can be found in the field of dance.
Prior to the sale of the long playing record in 1950, albums containing several 78 revolutions-per-minute records were often sold under umbrella titles (a collection of recordings from Oklahoma, for example). It can be argued that titles of all long-playing records and compact discs are "umbrella" titles -- and several such recordings with a common theme often have an umbrella title (such as Chip Davis' "Day Parts" series) as well.