《史记》小序形式上以四言韵语和散中带骈的句式为主，内容上包括史事记叙和评价议论。写于全书完成之后的一百三十条小序，分别对传文和“太史公曰”做出了不同程度的改写和重估，可从中窥探司马迁思想世界的一角。
从阶层价值的角度来看，本纪和世家小序、列传小序、表和书小序分别基本对应君主、臣子和史官三大阶层，并反映出立德、立功、立言的价值追求。在这一过程中“功”和“德”的使用语境发生了变化，司马迁根据天子失位、霸王掌权和士人兴起的历史现实更新了其文化内涵，以提供现存政治秩序的合法性。“言”的关注点也从政治转向了文学，文士群体属性凸显，并由此带来了小序文学性的形式特征；从历史因果的角度来看，《史记》小序宏观上采用剔除与调换等方式排列出两周、楚汉和入汉以后的时段分期，微观上使用增添和倒置因果等手法表达远谗和重士的观点。并且改写战国纷乱的历史现实以削弱秦的统一功能，强调楚汉诸侯的分封以昭示古制的重大作用，还以“近今”取代“当今”，重写汉朝的现当代史。如此种种结合在一起共同表现了司马迁的历史观；从评价逻辑的角度来看，《史记》小序表现出以褒为主的评价结果，以及侧重公众性和实用性的评价视域，成功通过公私角度的转换达成了褒贬重估的效果。而今文经学的美刺意识、后诸子时代的新旧思想之争以及武帝朝史官与臣子的身份冲突等是这一现象产生的时代背景环境，赋颂、经传、上书等时代作品则为其提供了一定的文学基础。

The prefaces to the Records of the Grand Historian are mainly in the form of quatrain rhymes and sentences with parallelism in scattered form, and their contents include historical narrative and evaluation and discussion. The 130 small prefaces rewrite and reevaluate the biographical texts and the "Sayings of the Eunuch of History" to different degrees, and offer a glimpse into the world of Si Ma Qian's thought.
From the perspective of hierarchical values, the minor preface to the Chronicle and the Family, the minor preface to the Biography, and the minor preface to the Tables and Books basically correspond to the three major classes of monarchs, courtiers, and historians, respectively, and reflect the pursuit of the values of establishing virtue, merit, and speech. In this process, Sima Qian updated the cultural connotation of "merit" and "virtue" to provide legitimacy for the existing political order, following the change in the context of the use of "merit" and "virtue". The word "yan" also undergoes new changes in terms of self-injection, group consciousness, and rhyming and scattering sentence patterns. From the point of view of historical cause and effect, the small preface of the Historical Records uses macroscopic methods such as elimination and transposition to arrange the time periods of the two weeks, Chu and Han, and after the entry of Han, and microscopic methods such as adding and reversing cause and effect to express the viewpoint of distant slander and emphasis on the scholar. It also rewrites the chaotic historical reality of the Warring States to weaken the unifying function of Qin, emphasizes the division of the vassals of Chu and Han to show the significant role of the ancient system, and replaces the "present day" with the "modern day" to rewrite the current contemporary history of the Han dynasty. The combination of all of these elements together expresses Sima Qian's view of history. From the perspective of the evaluation logic, the small preface of the Historical Records shows a predominan