This is a pre-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in Information & Culture 56, no. 2 (2021) following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version is available from University of Texas Press. Minding the Gap: Creating Meaning from Missing and Anomalous Data Ciaran B. Trace and Yan Zhang Running Header: Minding the Gap Bio: Ciaran B. Trace and Yan Zhang are associate professors at the School of Information at the University of Texas at Austin. Trace’s research examines what constitutes a literate society and the role that people play in creating and sustaining literate environments. Zhang’s research centers on consumer health information needs and information search behavior. Abstract: Complicating the notion that personal surveillance is always ubiquitous and pervasive, this article investigates the macro, meso, and micro level ‘gaps’ that confound the study of self- tracking. Literature from human-computer interaction, critical data studies, and archival science, as well as insights from qualitative research by the authors into the long-term value of self- tracking data, is used to expand a typology of ‘gaps’ that exist as part of the activities, behaviors, technologies, and data practices of self-tracking. In the article an emphasis is placed on elucidating micro-level accountable and expressive gaps, articulating how people respond to and make sense of the temporal absences in their own self-tracking data. In the process, the authors argue for self-tracking research to reorient from a perspective that seeks to mitigate all data gaps, to one in which data gaps are viewed as an opportunity to connect individuals with meaningful changes in the patterns of life. Keywords: personal informatics, information behavior, quantified self, self-tracking, data studies, small data, documents