Long-Lost Bob Dylan Album Returned To Ohio Library After Nearly 50 Years

Nearly five decades after someone checked it out of an Ohio library, a Bob Dylan album has returned to the shelves.

Sarah Phillips manages the University Heights branch of Heights Libraries. She recalled in a Heights Libraries press release published Thursday (May 27) that she “got a package in the mail from San Francisco that was record-shaped and — lo and behold! — it contained a record from our collection that was due back in June 1973!”

The package came from Howard Simon, who was an eighth-grader at Wiley Middle School in Cleveland Heights when he checked “Self Portrait” out at the library in the 1970s. He found it among his personal album collection — fittingly, in between Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” and “New Morning” albums, the release states.

He explained in a note to the library:

“As a recent retiree, I am taking the opportunity to turn my attention to some of the many vignettes of life that by dint of career and family have been neglected these many years…In that context, I am returning with this letter an overdue item (by my count, approximately 17,480 days overdue as of this writing)….it’s quite late, and I’m quite sorry! …this particular album has moved with me (in succession) from University Heights to Chicago, Santa Fe, Los Angeles, Berkeley, back to Chicago, back to Berkeley, again to Chicago, Sacramento, and finally San Francisco. I’m pleased it’s survived at all.””

Simon included two donations with the returned album: a $175 “replacement fee” and a copy of his own album.

He added in a comment to the press release that his “conscience is now fully assuaged” after returning the long-lost Bob Dylan album.

“The funny thing about this is that we don’t charge overdue fines anymore – as long as we get the item back, we see no need to penalize people,” Phillips explained in the release. “We’re grateful that Mr. Simon returned the record. I’d said we can now call it even.”

Photo: Heights Libraries