  The disagreement between theoretical predictions and observations for surface
lithium abundance in stars is a long-standing problem, which indicates that the
adopted physical treatment is still lacking in some points. However, thanks to
the recent improvements in both models and observations, it is interesting to
analyse the situation to evaluate present uncertainties. We present a
consistent and quantitative analysis of the theoretical uncertainties affecting
surface lithium abundance in the current generation of models. By means of an
up-to-date and well tested evolutionary code, FRANEC, theoretical errors on
surface 7Li abundance predictions, during the pre-main sequence (pre-MS) and
main sequence (MS) phases, are discussed in detail. Then, the predicted surface
7Li abundance was tested against observational data for five open clusters,
namely Ic 2602, \alpha Per, Blanco1, Pleiades, and Ngc 2516, and for four
detached double-lined eclipsing binary systems. Stellar models for the
aforementioned clusters were computed by adopting suitable chemical
composition, age, and mixing length parameter for MS stars determined from the
analysis of the colour-magnitude diagram of each cluster. We restricted our
analysis to young clusters, to avoid additional uncertainty sources such as
diffusion and/or radiative levitation efficiency. We confirm the disagreement,
within present uncertainties, between theoretical predictions and 7Li
observations for standard models. However, we notice that a satisfactory
agreement with observations for 7Li abundance in both young open clusters and
binary systems can be achieved if a lower convection efficiency is adopted
during the pre-MS phase with respect to the MS one.
