tomcat working directory

[Emil Nachev]

Hi,
Doing a webapp with servlets, jsp, tomcat7
For testing purposes, I want to load some externall data into my app
The external data as text in files - quite primitive
The point is I cannot read the files provided I set a relative path - tomcat cant find them.
Data files placed the same folder where I have the java class file reading them.
tried:
System.getProperty("user.dir")
And I got the current directory as tomcat/bin
Where to map the location of such external resources, so I dont need to place them in /bin folder?
Don't see appropriate nodes in the application's web.xml

Best Regards