Studies supporting a theory known as the Serial Position Effect indicate that learners tend to recall those items in a presentation which are ordered either first (primacy) or last (recency). Librarians may cover several topics in a one-shot instruction session, but will perhaps place special emphasis on a single topic. This single topic may or may not appear at the very beginning or ending of the instruction session, which could affect its likelihood of retention in the student learner. The author intends to compare librarian and student surveys from a number of instruction sessions over the course of a single semester with the objective of discovering which of these aspects--librarian emphasis or the serial position effect--is the more prominent influence on students’s self-reported retention of concepts.