Prof Merrick started collecting the information while in graduate school to support a pair of lectures on early modern witchcraft and science in the European history survey course in which he served as a teaching assistant. After receiving his PhD from Yale, Prof Merrick taught at Barnard and eventually moved to UWM. He has taught seminars on witchcraft in both places, and continued to expand the Bibliography.
By August 1996, Prof Merrick found himself too occupied with other projects to continue the maintenance and expansion of the Bibliography. He chose to turn that task over to Richard M. Golden, then Chair of the Department of History, the University of North Texas (Denton, Texas). Dr Golden was responsible for overseeing the maintenance and expansion of the existing Bibliography and enlarging the geographical and chronological scope.
In 2004, Dr Jonathan Durrant, offered to take on the responsibility for maintaining the Bibliography and, after one or two false starts, you find it up and running.