Tulsa Library Book Returned After 46 Years

The Tulsa City-County Library system says it's not uncommon for books to be returned late. Sometimes it’s just by a few days, other times a week. Or as is the case for the library in Owasso this week, they got a book 46 years late.

Friday, May 27th 2022, 5:13 pm



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The Tulsa City-County Library system says it's not uncommon for books to be returned late.

Sometimes it’s just by a few days, other times a week. Or as is the case for the library in Owasso this week, they got a book 46 years late.

"It's a little bit overdue," said Karen Inman, who works at the Owasso branch. "It was due on September the 8th, 1976. So just a few years ago."

Inman dropped off a copy of “Annie Annie” earlier this week, a young adult novel written in 1969.

No surprise, they couldn't find the book in their system.

"This is actually one of those books that it’s hard to find nowadays,” said Inman. “It's so old it’s not in print anymore. And it wasn't the best, most popular of books."

With a distinct smell and nice brown pages, it was very obvious this book was from another time.

Long before a computer system, the library would use stamps to check out the books.

But since that hasn't been used in decades, they have no clue who checked it out.

"Our guess was probably someone was cleaning out someone's house and just came across this and realized 'oh well it says it’s a library book so I’ll get it back to them.' said Inman. “I don't even know if they realize, because unless you know what you're looking for, you wouldn't realize how late it was."

But the good news for whoever returned it, is this isn't like the Seinfeld episode with a library cop, this library got rid of all fines several years ago.

So even if they did know who had it, there's no fine.

Even half of a century late.

"We're just happy to have the book back. It's a fun story," said Inman.

Inman says they don't know what they're going to do with the book long-term.

The first thing they'll do though is return it to the downtown location since that's where it was checked out.

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