diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index cd21c52e..5e2bf36b 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ CHANGES for MDPOW
 Add summary of changes for each release. Use ISO 8061 dates. Reference
 GitHub issues numbers and PR numbers.
 
-2024-10-10    0.9.0
+2024-10-11    0.9.0
 cadeduckworth, orbeckst, VOD555, a-ws-m
 
 Changes
@@ -74,6 +74,9 @@ Fixes
 * fix ensemble.EnsembleAnalysis.check_groups_from_common_ensemble (#212)
 * updated versioneer (#285)
 * fix that simulation stages cannot be restarted after error (#272)
+* fix that testing resource data files were not packaged at all; they are now
+  included with the sdist (tar.gz) (23 MiB) but excluded from the wheel (whl)
+  (2.3 MiB) (#293)
 
 
 2022-01-03    0.8.0
diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
index 3e54d25b..93a70fe0 100644
--- a/MANIFEST.in
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 include   setup.py setup.cfg COPYING INSTALL.rst README.rst AUTHORS CHANGES
+include   versioneer.py
+include   mdpow/_version.py
 graft     mdpow/templates/
 graft     mdpow/top/
-include versioneer.py
-include mdpow/_version.py
+graft     mdpow/tests/testing_resources/
+global-exclude *.py[cod]
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index afc3ff10..32060d44 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -46,6 +46,8 @@
         "scripts/mdpow-solvationenergy",
         "scripts/mdpow-get-runinput",
     ],
+    # exclude large data sets in tests/testing_resources/*
+    include_package_data=True,
     package_data={
         "mdpow": [
             "top/*.dat",
@@ -57,6 +59,11 @@
             "templates/*",
         ],
     },
+    exclude_package_data={
+        "mdpow.tests": [
+            "testing_resources/*",
+        ]
+    },
     install_requires=[
         "numpy>=1.6",
         "scipy>=1.11.0",