Since the first fascicle of the MLW was published in 1959 the world of science and its environment have changed drastically. Starting in the 90ies of the 20^th century, the associates began to prepare the print templates themselves and send them to the publisher. Before that, a complex procedure had to be followed, with blue prints and proof reading going back and forth between project and publisher.

Starting with the lemma coniugium (volume 2, column 1441) the MLW began to exist in a digitized version as well. This required by implication, that the first two volumes had to be retro-digitized for building the data base. This task was taken on by the Kompetenzzentrum für elektronische Erschließungs- und Publikationsverfahren in den Geisteswissenschaften an der Universität Trier (see also Cooperations).

The digital version has been published for the general scientific public in July 2019.