Wayne State University Libraries will celebrate a milestone Sept. 16 with addition of the 3 millionth volume to the university's collections. The event, to be held at 2 p.m. in the Bernath Auditorium of the David Adamany Undergraduate Library, is among many the university is planning to coincide with inauguration week activities in honor of WSU's ninth president, Irvin D. Reid.

The book selected for the honor is Anatomy of a Miracle: The End of Apartheid and the Birth of the New South Africa, a work by native Detroiter Patti Waldmeir. She will be the featured speaker for the program.

From 1984-86, Waldmeir was a correspondent for the Financial Times in South Africa, where she reported on the exiled and outlawed African National Congress. Later, she was the paper's bureau chief in Johannesburg. She now lives in Washington, D.C.

Anatomy of a Miracle, chosen for the 1998 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism, draws upon Waldmeir's eyewitness accounts of township violence, of conversations with presidents past and present and of guerrilla actions.

Soft-cover copies of the book will be available for purchase in the library the day of the event, and Waldmeir will sign books following her remarks.

The WSU Libraries added their one-millionth volume in 1966 and the 2 millionth in 1984.