Well, actually, "The Odessa File" would, under the old filing rules, file under "Odessa." Initial articles in any language are skipped. "L'Oreal" would file under "O," "Der Spiegel" under "Spiegel" and so on.

Now in the MARC format, which is used pretty much world wide although with regional variation (UK MARC, US MARC, CANADIAN MARC CANADIEN, etc.) the title is filed the same way. BUT you have to tell the computer that in indexing the title it's supposed to skip a certain number of spaces: e.g., "The Odessa File" would have four skips -- for T, H, E, and the space. Skip three places and it would be indexed under the blank, skip five and it would be indexed under "d".

The MARC field would look something like this:

245 14 The Odessa file

245 tells the computer that it's a title, 1 means something that I forget right now and don't feel like asking, and 4 skip four spaces and then index.

So the next time your library's online catalog can't find the title you're sure should be there, try various spaces from the first letter: 0, 1, 2, etc. Don't try to search under a blank though, it won't work.