Linking Objects in a Hierarchy

Hello everyone, I’m wondering if there is a way to link objects that are in a hierarchy and preserve that hierarchy (using Blender 2.69).

In Detail:
I’ve got some ‘generic components’ (comprised of multiple meshes / empties) that I’m using for multiple models. I’ve noticed that just linking the objects themselves does get them in the scene, but I have to manually re-create the hierarchy every time. I’ve also tried linking the entire source scene which will preserve the hierarchies, but I cannot seem to make either the scene or the objects in that scene into proxy objects (so I can’t do anything with them).

I’m wondering if there is in fact a way to get the result I’m looking for. Any ideas are appreciated, thank you for reading.