Lightroom, MacBook with limited internal storage - how to work withseveral external USB sticks

I'm trying to understand LR Classic and/or CC's concept of storage.


I have a MacBook - it has 512GB internal SSD which will be shared with
several users (family).

So I cannot have my entire photo collection on there (in terms of the
originals).


Can LR manage working with photos stored in sets on a number of USB Sticks?

I would tend to load up a stick with 1-2 year's worth of originals, so I
would have sticks labelled:

2013-15
2015-17

etc depending on how many photos fit.


Or do I need to put them on a single external device that's always there
when I use LR?


Starting from the ground up here, so trying to decide how to manage
storage of the original photo files. At the moment they are on a big
slow NAS. For LR work, I need them portable as I'll be working on the
train and away from home.

Cheers,

Tim