Hines was born in Washington, D.C. and attended undergraduate school at George Washington University and received his Masters of Library Science (MLS) in 1958 and a PhD in 1960 both from Rutgers University.
With his wife, Lois Winkel, he designed an indexing program called the Children’s Media Databank.
This program allowed a patron to search for children's books by subject and reading level.
A sample search query might be a 3rd grader with a 6th grade reading level on the subject of clouds.
[3] The ASI considers him its "founding father", and set up the Theodore C. Hines Award in his honor in 1993.