Ariadne (named for the figure from Greek mythology) is a European association for sharing knowledge and fostering international cooperation in teaching that is open to the world. Ariadne was initiated in 1996 by the European Commission's telematics for education and training program. Since then, an infrastructure has been developed in Belgium and Switzerland for the production of reusable learning content, including distributed storage and discovery, as well as its exploitation in structured courses. The core of this infrastructure is a distributed library of digital, reusable educational components called the Knowledge Pool System (KPS) now actively used in both academic and corporate contexts.