Oh, National Library of Scotland, you’re so cool. I want to be like you when I grow up. The latest offering from the NLS is the Scottish Screen Archive’s 1000 clips online, available at http://ssa.nls.uk/ .

Actually this site is a catalog of Scottish films, beyond the 1000 clips. You can browse the catalog by place, subject, biography, or decade (the clips go back to the 1890s, though most of the clips seem to be in the 1950s and 1960s) or you can search by several factors. You can also limit your search results to those film results which do have clips online, and/or those clips to which the Library has clear copyright or can clear copyright.

I did a full search for Highlanders and limited my results to those catalog listings which have clips available. I got eight results, ranging from a silent film in 1899 to a 1961 film about children in Scotland’s orphanages who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time bobbing for apples. (It was a very odd clip.)

The catalog pages for each film are extensive. In addition to the standard name, date, length, etc. There’s also an extensive shot listing with time markers. Clips are embedded on the right side of the page. There are descriptions for those clips as well. Most of the catalog pages I looked at had multiple clips available. Underneath the embedded clips are copyright notifications and suggestions — based on topic — for other film catalog pages which might prove interesting.

For more information about the Scottish Film Archive, check out the FAQs and the About Us page.