It can also mean an information table that is used as a quick and easy reference for things that are difficult to remember such as comparing imperial with metric measurements.
For example, in a relational database model of a warehouse the entity 'Item' may have a field called 'status' with a predefined set of values such as 'sold', 'reserved', 'out of stock'.
In a purely designed database these values would be divested into an extra entity or Reference Table called 'status' in order to achieve database normalisation.
The advantage of doing this is that internal functionality and optional conditions within the database and the software which utilizes it are easier to modify and extend on that particular aspect.
Establishing an enterprise-wide view of reference tables is called master data management.