Abstract: Memorabilia is an important genre to record sports history. Based on the compilation practice of Sports Memorabilia of the People' Republic of China (1949-2019), a sub program of the national social science major project Sports History of the People's Republic of China (1949-2019), this paper discusses the theoretical problems of sports memorabilia. The research shows that the advantage of sports memorabilia lies in showing the complexity and diversity of sports process in an all-round way by taking big events as the key link, taking time as the order, and restoring the original scene and historical context of sports occurrence and development. The selection of "event items" in sports memorabilia should adhere to the criteria of integrating major events, important events, special events and new events. The writing principle of memorabilia should conform to the requirements of keeping "key elements" complete, "recording every item independently", making the overall structure coordinated and orderly, and ensuring language refined. The overall compilation of memorabilia should follow the chronological order, supplemented by the background of chronicles. In short, sports memorabilia, as a systematic diachronic record of major sports events in a given historical period and with implicit three-dimensional structure from the perspective of national history, plays a fundamental and supporting role in the study of sports history.

Key words: memorabilia, compilation principles and methods, historiography theory, sports history