A：Excuse me. Can you tell me how to find some books on social science?

请问，能告诉我怎样查找社会科学书籍吗?

B：Sure. You see all these little drawers here and all the way around the walls?

当然。你看到靠墙排列的这一个个小抽屉了吗?

A：Yes.

看见了。

B：These drawers contain cards desribing every book in our library. Together they constitute the library's "card catalog". You can see that each drawer runs from one part of the alphabet to another. Fox example, this drawer goes from SCA to SCM.

这些抽屉里装着的卡片记录了我们图书馆每一本图书，它们构成了图书馆的“卡片目录”。你可以看到每个抽屉都从字母表中的某一部分排到另一部分。比如说这只抽屉，就是从SCA排到SCM。

A：So if I'm looking for a look called A History of Western Society, I'd just look under 'A'.

这么说，如果我要找一本《西方社会史》的话，就在“A”的分类下找。

B：No. You'd look under 'W'. The articles 'a' and 'the' don't count in our alphabetization, and cards are generally omitted for extremely common words and phrases such as 'history of', 'introduction to', 'story of' and so forth.

不。应该在“W”下找。冠词“a”和“the”不包括在字母排列中。一般来说，目录卡片往往省略一些特别常用的词和词组。如：“的历史”，“的介绍”，“的故事”等等。

A：What if I don't know the title of the book?

如果我不知道书名怎么办?

B：Well, you can look under the author's name.

那你可以在作者名下找。

A：Could you give me an example?

能举个例子吗?

B：Suppose you want to find a book by your professor, William Smith. You'd look under SMITH and then WILLIAM. Since that's very common name, you may have to go through several 'William Smith' until you come to the one who wrote book on the subject you are interested in.

假如你要找一本你的导师威廉.史密斯教授写的书，你可以先查史密斯，再查威廉。由于这是一个很常见的姓名，你可能要查阅好几个威廉.史密斯，才能找到你所感兴趣的那本书的作者。