You are oh so right Mark. And for those of you who aren't exactly sure what referenceing is, it is a good way to model high memory objects or small scenes without your system slowing you down. Apart from this, it has many other uses as well.

Basically, If you have a "mainvillagescene.mb" file, you can create all the houses in another file - "Houses.mb." You can create all the characters in "characters.mb" too. Now, you go to "mainvillagescene.mb" open up the reference editor (under File) and reference "Houses.mb" and "characters.mb" to it. You now have combined all three scenes. Because the house and character files were made in their own files, you can tweak whatever you want to in those files without models from the other files interfering.

You should read the help files to learn more about this useful feature.