Libraries
This collection consists of correspondence, newspaper clippings, photographs, prints, postage stamps, journal and typescript articles pertaining to poultry breeder Leonora C. Hering (1898-1983). A member of the World’s Poultry Science Association and a former co-director of the American Partridge Plymouth Rock Club, Hering raised Houdans in Los Altos, California. Beginning as early as 1950, she sought to create a comprehensive poultry publication collection for Kansas State College by consulting with librarian William Behr and Department of Poultry Husbandry chairperson Loyal F. Payne. Her monograph collection – consisting of nearly 1000 titles – was cataloged for the Libraries as the “Leonora Hering Memorial Poultry Collection.”
Sporadic copies of journals interleaved with correspondence, newspaper clippings, and ephemeral materials form the basis of this archival collection. They document Hering’s research, the international community of breeders, book dealers, and agriculture librarians with whom she corresponded. They cover issues related to poultry, including, but not limited to, farming and production, diseases, specific breeds and breeding associations, recipes, legal restrictions, marketing, rationing, incubation technologies, vocalizations, and children’s folk stories and postage stamps featuring poultry.
Publications are international in scope, with representative examples in multiple languages (1849-1973). All of the children’s stories are in Russian. Correspondence from England, France, Germany, Holland, Japan, New Zealand, and Russia is included (1952-1980), and some of those letters contain photographic images and postcards. A secondary interest in poultry philately is represented in correspondence with and acquisitions from stamp dealers. Poultry advertisements, the earliest of which originates from postbellum Ohio, also feature prominently.
Note: A photostat of Basics of Industrial Poultry Production by D. I. Gerasimov (in Russian), along with correspondence
The Nora Hering Collection of taxidermy specimens and poultry art reside in Call Hall, which was home to the Department of Dairy Science and the Department of Poultry Science at the time of her gift.