The Scottish Film & Television Archive was created in 1976 when the Scottish Film Council was awarded Government funding to identify a collection of films. This project was headed by Archive Curator Janet McBain from 1976-2011.

In 1997 the Scottish Film Council merged with Scottish Film Production, Scottish Screen Locations and Scottish Broadcast and Film Training Trust. This combined group of organisations became “Scottish Screen” and the collection then became known as the “Scottish Screen Archive”.

In 2003 Scottish Screen launched an online moving image catalogue and in 2007 the Scottish Screen Archive became part of the National Library of Scotland. In September 2015 the name of “Scottish Screen Archive” changed again to “National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive”.