diff --git a/shablona/data.py b/shablona/data.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1bf062b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/shablona/data.py
@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+"""shablona.data: download and read data."""
+import os
+import sys
+import contextlib
+import os.path as op
+from hashlib import md5
+from shutil import copyfileobj
+
+if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
+    from urllib2 import urlopen, urljoin
+else:
+    from urllib.request import urlopen, urljoin
+
+# Set a user-writeable file-system location to put files:
+SHABLONA_HOME = op.join(os.path.expanduser('~'), '.shablona')
+
+def get_file_data(fname, url):
+    """
+    Put data from a URL into a local file.
+
+    Paramters
+    ---------
+    fname : str
+       Local file-name for the resulting data file.
+
+    url : str
+        The URL of the remote file to download.
+    """
+    with contextlib.closing(urlopen(url)) as opener:
+        with open(fname, 'wb') as data:
+            copyfileobj(opener, data)
+
+
+def get_file_md5(filename):
+    """
+    Compute the md5 checksum of a file.
+
+    Parameters
+    ----------
+    filename : string
+       The name of the file.
+
+    Returns
+    -------
+    md5 checksum of the file contents
+    """
+    md5_data = md5()
+    with open(filename, 'rb') as f:
+        for chunk in iter(lambda: f.read(128*md5_data.block_size), b''):
+            md5_data.update(chunk)
+    return md5_data.hexdigest()
+
+
+def check_md5(filename, stored_md5=None):
+    """
+    Compute the md5 checksum of a file and validate against stored checksum.
+
+    Parameters
+    -----
+    filename : string
+        Path to a file.
+    stored_md5 : string
+        Known md5 of filename to check against. If None (default), checking is
+        skipped.
+    """
+    if stored_md5 is not None:
+        computed_md5 = _get_file_md5(filename)
+        if stored_md5 != computed_md5:
+            msg = """The downloaded file, %s, does not have the expected md5
+   checksum of "%s". Instead, the md5 checksum was: "%s". This could mean that
+   something is wrong with the file or that the upstream file has been changed.
+   """ % (filename, stored_md5, computed_md5)
+            raise ValueError(msg)
+
+
+def fetch_data(files, folder, data_size=None):
+    """
+    Download files to folder and validate their md5 checksums.
+
+    Parameters
+    ----------
+    files : dictionary
+
+        For each file in `files` the key should be the local file name and the value
+        should be (url, md5). The file will be downloaded from url if the file
+        does not already exist or if the file exists but the md5 checksum does
+        not match.
+
+    folder : str
+        The directory where to save the file, the directory will be created if
+        it does not already exist.
+    data_size : str, optional
+        A string describing the size of the data (e.g. "91 MB") to be logged to
+        the screen. Default does not produce any information about data size.
+
+    Raises
+    ------
+    ValueError
+        Raises if the md5 checksum of the file does not match the expected
+        value. The downloaded file is not deleted when this error is raised.
+
+    """
+    if not os.path.exists(folder):
+        print("Creating new folder %s" % (folder))
+        os.makedirs(folder)
+
+    if data_size is not None:
+        print('Data size is approximately %s' % data_size)
+
+    all_skip = True
+    for f in files:
+        url, md5 = files[f]
+        fullpath = pjoin(folder, f)
+        if os.path.exists(fullpath) and (get_file_md5(fullpath) == md5):
+            continue
+        all_skip = False
+        print('Downloading "%s" to %s' % (f, folder))
+        get_file_data(fullpath, url)
+        check_md5(fullpath, md5)
+    if all_skip:
+        msg = 'Dataset is already in place. If you want to fetch it again '
+        msg += 'please first remove the folder %s ' % folder
+        print(msg)
+    else:
+        print("Files successfully downloaded to %s" % (folder))
+
+
+def fetch_shablona_data(data_size="16 kb"):
+    """
+
+    """
+    # This is the URL to figshare data repository:
+    base_url = "https://ndownloader.figshare.com/articles/2543089/versions/2"
+    files = {"ortho.csv": (urljoin(base_url, "ortho.csv"),
+                           '001eff7cf46bc57220bc6288e6c21563'),
+             "para.csv": (urljoin(base_url, "para.csv"),
+                          'a0252d4ac6e0846f87e9d8995c79070e')}
+
+    fetch_data(files, SHABLONA_HOME, data_size=data_size)
+    return files
+
+def read_shablona_data():
+    files = fetch_shablona_data()
+    for k in files.keys: