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

請問，能告訴我怎樣查找社會科學書籍嗎?

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

當然。你看到靠墻排列的這一個個小抽屜了嗎?

A：Yes.

看見了。

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.

這些抽屜里裝著的卡片記錄了我們圖書館每一本圖書，它們構(gòu)成了圖書館的“卡片目錄”。你可以看到每個抽屜都從字母表中的某一部分排到另一部分。比如說這只抽屜，就是從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'.

這么說，如果我要找一本《西方社會史》的話，就在“A”的分類下找。

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。應該在“W”下找。冠詞“a”和“the”不包括在字母排列中。一般來說，目錄卡片往往省略一些特別常用的詞和詞組。如：“的歷史”，“的介紹”，“的故事”等等。

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

如果我不知道書名怎么辦?

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?

能舉個例子嗎?

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導師威廉.史密斯教授寫的書，你可以先查史密斯，再查威廉。由于這是一個很常見的姓名，你可能要查閱好幾個威廉.史密斯，才能找到你所感興趣的那本書的作者。