Referencing Script
I wrote this script a while ago whilst I was still at University. It was basically to help us reference assets into our shot files.
Our structure was:
Maya Project -> Assets -> Props -> PROP NAME FOLDER -> PROP.ma
So the script would read all .ma files in the "prop name folders" and give you a list of all the props in the folder, you could then select as many as you needed and reference them all in. Made the whole process a bit more simple, although Maya does have more advanced scene setup tools which would have been more effective in the long run, if we put the time into learning them.