Abstract: This paper has been concerned with the design of CSJP(Chinese Seismology Journal Paper) document retrieval system which is on-line retrieval system for the users, with the document indexing and the document retrieve, it gives the block diagram of the retrieval system, the flow charts of the retrieval program and of building up the database and makes an illustration in detail. CSJP document database mainly collects demestic journal papers about the earthquake p-ediction research. There are about sixty journals, which are published in China, in the database. We have used VAX 11/750 minicomputer and VAX Datatrieve, VAX Common Data Dictionary softwares. So it is an English system. The length of a record for a paper is fixed, 1830 bytes long.