Dictionaries in other scripts.

From what I know the Chinese "alphabet" works different from the English or Spanish, my question is: how do they organise dictionaries? In English we have a pre-established order for letters and in that established orders we compile dicionaries. I guess it's probably the same in Greek and Russian but if I was in a Chinese streer and saw a word how would I look it up in a dictionary?
Million thanks for your help-

...we compile dicTionaries.
...in a Chinese streeT.
Sorry, I was in a hurry.

Chinese dictionaries are usually unordered and you look up the character with the help of an index based on stroke count, radical, or some other system like the four-corner method. There are some dictionaries where they're ordered alphabetically by their pinyin, though. Japanese dictionaries are ordered according to 五十音 (gojuuon) kana ordering.

Can a person little to no knowledge of Chinese use a dictionary effectively? I think that if a was in Russia with a basic knowledge of the alphabet I'd be able to find a word fairly quickly.

No. Using a Chinese dictionary can be hard even for people who know a lot of Chinese.

http://www.sino-platonic.org/abstracts/spp001_chinese_dictionaries.html

Electronic dictionaries, however, can be simple in Chinese. To look up a word, you just write it in. Even if you don't recognize the characters, with enough practice you will get a feel for how to write unfamiliar characters with the proper stroke order. It would be difficult for somebody with "little to no knowledge of Chinese" to figure out the proper stroke order for many characters, though.

- Kef