Pixel International Conferences

Introduction: 3.8 billion people are social media users, which is almost half of the world’s population. The situation in Bulgaria is identical – in 2021 in Bulgaria there are over 4.53 million users of social networks (which is approximately 65.7% of the Bulgarian population), and the trend is that by 2026 they will be over 5 million. All this only proves that the presence in social networks is more than mandatory, and it can only bring positives for each organization or institution. The aim of the paper is to compare the activity of the regional libraries and the regional history museums in Bulgaria in the period 13 March–13 May 2020, when a state of emergency was declared, all institutions were closed, and all people had to stay at home, with the situation today. In this way we can trace how they managed to adapt to the completely new and unknown situation then with today, when this reality is already our new reality. Results: Some good examples for innovative approaches in the field of non-formal education in the Internet environment are presented. This is part of the research activities of project team of young scientists – students, PhD students and postdoctoral students from the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies (Sofia, Bulgaria), are developing a research project KP 06-M35/3 from 18.12.2019 entitled: “Research of contemporary educational programs of cultural institutions in Bulgaria”, funded by the National Science Fund, part of the Ministry of Education and Science. Conclusions: With the millions of apps, websites, and other platforms for people to communicate through media that are all over the Internet these days, this is truly the age of social media. But the pandemic for almost two years now imposes restrictions that came with it and led to even greater living in the online space.