Most pure Perl modules work just like that. Copy the source files to the right location in any directory in @INC and the module will get loaded. It doesn't matter if that is /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl, /home/foo/perl/lib, or "../lib".

Storable is a binary extension. It has a dynamic library that needs to be loaded. The building and placement of those is more particular. It is still possible to install binary extensions in a personal directory. It is more difficult to build the library on another machine because the build environment needs to be the same.