The current research examined the need for Amharicrnsoftware and found that in general software to handle Amharicrnscript and in particular, text processing software arernrequired.To t ,h!snd. Available text retrieval software arernover viewed and compared with Kicro CDS/ISIS version 2.3.,rnCDS/ISIS is found to be the best text retrieval software forrnwhich Amharic version can be developed . Therefore, an Amharicrnversion of the Micro CDS/ISIS was developed and tested. Thisrnversion can perform all functions that the English versionrndoes and can be used for developing information storage andrnretrieval systems in Amharic and containing Amharic databases .rnThe capabilities and limitations of the developedrnsoftware are described and suggests lines of future work.