Terrence Mark Hodges was born in Sheffield, England, on June 18, 1933. His mother was a teacher, and his father a banker. Hodges was seven years old during the German bombardment of Sheffield in December 1940, which killed over 800 civilians. World War II left an indelible impression on Hodges, and he often spoke of his family's experiences during the War.

Hodges was educated in England and graduated from the Leeds College School of Librarianship. From 1951-1953 Hodges embarked on his first overseas library adventure, when he directed the library at the Suez Garrison Army Education Centre in Egypt. He then returned to Sheffield, where he worked in the Sheffield City Public Library System, rising to the position of Branch Librarian. During the 1950s the United States experienced an acute shortage of trained librarians, and Hodges seized the opportunity to emigrate there, accepting the position of Reference Librarian at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. He later moved to Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and then to the Brooklyn Public Library, where he directed the King's Highway Branch and filled the position of Senior Librarian, Language and Literature Division, at the main library. While working in Brooklyn, Hodges met and married fellow librarian, Judith Rosenbloom.

Hodges came into medical libraries in 1965 with an appointment as Circulation Librarian at Harvard's new Countway Library in Boston. At the Countway he became Director of the New England Regional Medical Library Service in 1967, and in 1970 he moved to Emory University in Atlanta to establish the Southeastern Regional Medical Library Program. In 1972 Hodges moved to Nashville to become Director of Vanderbilt's Medical Center Library. He remained at Vanderbilt until his retirement in 1995. His achievements at Vanderbilt were many: he more than doubled the size of the staff; coordinated the automation of the library's card catalog; doubled the collection; established a Special Collections department; and negotiated the budget up to ten times its size when he came. His crowning achievement was the planning of a magnificent new library, the Annette and Irwin Eskind Biomedical Library, which opened in 1994.

Mark Hodges was an active member of a variety of library organizations. He worked diligently for the Medical Library Association (MLA) throughout his career. In 1995, he was elected as a MLA Fellow and he was chosen to give the 1997 Janet Doe Lecture on a topic concerning the history or philosophy of medical librarianship. In 1999 Hodges received the MLA's highest award, The Marcia Noyes Award. He was also elected Fellow of the [British] Library Association in 1990 and was a regular contributor to the publications of its Medical, Health and Welfare Group. Hodges was a charter member of the Association of Academic Health Science Library Directors (AAHSLD) and served on its Board of Directors from 1987-1990. The Mid-Tennessee Health Science Librarians Consortium was founded by Hodges in 1973, and he was a charter member of the Consortium of Southern Biomedical Libraries (CONBLS), for which he served as Vice-President from 1985-1987 and as President from 1987-1989.

In retirement, Hodges devoted himself to the history of medicine and medical librarianship. He served as obituaries editor for the Journal of the Medical Library Association, published a history of the Southern Chapter of the Medical Library Association, and was the main speaker at a memorial conference held in London in 2005, honoring noted medical bibliographer, librarian, and historian Leslie T. Morton. Hodges interviewed Leslie T. Morton in 1999 and 2000. MLA published the transcript of the Morton interview, and a copy is available in Special Collections at the Eskind Library. Mark Hodges was an active member of Vanderbilt's History of Medicine Society and was scheduled to speak to this group about Leslie T. Morton's tremendous contributions to the study of the history of medicine on April 13th, less than two weeks after his untimely death on April 2, 2006.