House man's inside to find reference work (9)
I believe the answer is:
thesaurus
'reference work' is the definition.
(I know that thesaurus is a type of wordbook)
'house man's inside' is the wordplay.
'house' becomes 'taurus' (Taurus is an example).
'man's' becomes 'he's' (he's).
'inside' indicates putting letters inside.
'taurus' going around 'hes' is 'THESAURUS'.
'to find' acts as a link.
(Other definitions for thesaurus that I've seen before include "Wordy book" , "Word-finder" , "Book listing synonyms" , "treasury" , "Wordy gathering" .)