diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 454293e..e714c88 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 .DS_store
 .idea
-**/*.npy
 .conda-env
 /play.py
 
diff --git a/src/scgenerator/data/raman_response.npy b/src/scgenerator/data/raman_response.npy
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a6b6ce0
Binary files /dev/null and b/src/scgenerator/data/raman_response.npy differ
diff --git a/src/scgenerator/io.py b/src/scgenerator/io.py
index 406062c..9876486 100644
--- a/src/scgenerator/io.py
+++ b/src/scgenerator/io.py
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 from __future__ import annotations
 
 import datetime
+import importlib
 import json
 import os
 from dataclasses import dataclass
@@ -9,12 +10,12 @@ from typing import BinaryIO, Protocol, Sequence
 from zipfile import ZipFile
 
 import numpy as np
-import pkg_resources
 
 
 def data_file(path: str) -> Path:
     """returns a `Path` object pointing to the desired data file included in `scgenerator`"""
-    return Path(pkg_resources.resource_filename("scgenerator", path))
+    file = importlib.resources.files("scgenerator") / "data" / path
+    return importlib.resources.as_file(file)
 
 
 class CustomEncoder(json.JSONEncoder):